strange issues with memory and flash :

[mirehteshamali]

HI all today i ran in very strange issue ,

i was unable to telnet my router .

when i logged via console , the following messages appeared .

Dec 17 08:50:19.618: %SYS-2-CHUNKEXPANDFAIL: Could not expand chunk pool for ipnat globaltr. No memory available -Process= "Chunk Manager", ipl= 4, pid= 1,  -Traceback= 0x60046F6Cz 0x62C31434z 0x62C31418z

*Dec 17 08:50:29.282: %SYS-2-MALLOCFAIL: Memory allocation of 65536 bytes failed from 0x6004B8F8, alignment 8 Pool: Processor  Free: 345524  Cause: Memory fragmentation Alternate Pool: None  Free: 0  Cause: No Alternate pool -Process= "Chunk Manager", ipl= 4, pid= 1,  -Traceback= 0x600145D0z 0x6002E7B4z 0x600482C0z 0x60046D9Cz 0x60046F28z 0x62C31434z 0x62C31418z

*Dec 17 08:50:29.622: %SYS-2-CHUNKEXPANDFAIL: Could not expand chunk pool for ipnat entry.

No memory available -Process= "Chunk Manager", ipl= 4, pid= 1,  -Traceback= 0x60046F6Cz 0x62C31434z 0x62C31418z 

they seemed to be continously poping on my console . !

i have to restart the router to make it work again . this time it allowded telnet session .

The second peculier thing was show flash out put !

#show flash:

System CompactFlash directory:
File  Length   Name/status
  1   48612740  y
  2   224867   crashinfo_20110304-235111
[48837736 bytes used, 15387540 available, 64225276 total]
62720K bytes of ATA System CompactFlash (Read/Write)

neither DIR nor SHOW FLASH showed me the ios image . now since it rebooted properly and i found no image in flash , seems to be some fatal error ?

[Reza Sharifi]

Hi,

What type of router or switch is it?.  Since there is no image on the flash or it is corrupted, you may have to use xmodem to load a new IOS to your flash and than try to rebooting it.  The error message appears to be a memory issue. 

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/hw/routers/ps259/products_tech_note09186a008015bfac.shtml

HTH

[lgijssel · Accepted solution]

There is no requirement for the bootfile to have a particular name.

The IOS file on your router is the file called " y ".

regards,

Leo

[Richard Burts]

I believe that Leo has correctly identified what is going on. You could confirm it by looking at the output of show version from the router. There is a line in the output that shows the name of the image file and I am confident that it will show that the image name is y.

I have seen things like this before where someone did not understand the prompts from the Cisco copy command. The copy command was asking that they confirm the file name to be used and the user responded with y believing that yes would confirm the name to use but in fact the router then takes y as the file name.

The original error reported is almost certainly the result of a memory leak. It is likely that it will occur again and a reboot is the only way to fix it once it starts. To prevent it from happening would require loading a different image.

HTH

Rick