The primary PIX 500 Series Firewall running software version 6.x crashes intermittently with watchdog errors

[TCC_2]

Core issue

The PIX Firewall crashes during a configuration update.  A watchdog error occurs in these two scenarios:

1. When Security Associations (SAs) are freed.
    
2. When IDENT structs are unlocked.

This problem impacts customers who have thousands of tunnels.

The intermittent reload is due to an issue that Cisco bug ID CSCec78327 identifies.

Resolution

To resolve the problem, download and upgrade to PIX 6.3.5 or later.