3750-X: Unable to upgrade Switch IOS to 15.2.2(E)7

[hikari-no-kumo]

Hello

I would like to ask community members of the issue I have faced.

My company has considerable amount of 3750-X stack in production environment presenting our solutions to the customers. Hence it is extremely important to avoid any downtime for production environment and moreover to make upgrade process as smooth and straightforward as possible.

Currently all switch stacks (3750X) runs on IOS 12.2(55)SE9.

Meanwhile, due to security vulnerabilities currently our security team strongly insist to upgrade to IOS firmware of 15.2 branch. 

Actually the chosen firmware is IOS 15.2(2)E7.

We do have lab for testing different topologies and for sure upgrades.

Unfortunately test upgrades encounter some weird issues: from 6 switches I have tried to upgrade, 5 of them failed to upgrade to 15.2 firmware. Of course MD5 very verified, firmware have been uploaded several times more. Additionally, different firmware version were used (15.2(2)E7, 15.2(2)E8, 15.2(4)E4, 15.2(2)E)

Each time the switch tested, unpacked firmware, but failed on loading to RAM stage:

@@@@
File "flash:c3750e-universalk9-mz.152-2.E7/c3750e-universalk9-mz.152-2.E7.bin" uncompressed and installed, entry point: 0x3000
executing...
Loading "flash:/c3750e-universalk9-mz.122-55.SE9.bin"...@@@

In case on flash the older firmware is not present -- the switch goes to ROMMON.

I have raised support case with TAC, however TAC engineers insist on hardware issue. This could be acceptable, however I have encounter same issue on 5 of 6 3750-X switches in the lab. 

That is really gives me too much suspicions to consider problems in hardware of some switch amount. It is unlikely to have coincidence for 5 switches in a row with hardware issue which are present only on IOS 15.2 - moreover no issue can be seen on IOS 12.2 for example.

I have collected "sh version" outputs from the switches.

Please share your opinions and experience about such issues. To be honest I am a bit lost and can't predict the future behavior of production switches upgrade (which is upcoming)

Thank you very much in advance.

Best regards, Vladimir

[Leo Laohoo]

Console into one of the switch that won't load 15.2(2)E7 and reboot. We want to see what the switch is up to.

[hikari-no-kumo]

Hi Leo Laohoo

Of course I have monitored every such issue via console port.

Each time the switch cannot load 15.2 firmware and there were no other firmware on flash - it dropped to ROMMON immediately.

No error message, no crashinfo - nothing. 

[Leo Laohoo]

Very hard to troubleshoot what's happening without seeing the entire thing.

[steffenmoser]

Hi hikari-no-kumo,

I just came across your posting from 2018. I've been running into a similar (or the same) problem when trying to upgrade my IPBase WS-C3750X-24P from IOS 15.0.2-SE12 to IOS 15.2.4E10. It seems that 15.2.1E3 is the latest version that runs on my switch. All newer versions I tried (beginning with 15.2.2E) lead to the same behavior as described in your posting.

My switch is not part of a stack, it has a permanent IPBase license. "show version" lists the "Version ID" as "V06" and the "Hardware Board Revision Number" as "0x05". The "Model Revision Number" is "A0".

My question is: What was the solution to your problem?

I would be very glad to hear from you! Thank you very much in advance!

Kind regards,
Steffen

[Leo Laohoo]

Raise a new thread and tell us what you are trying to accomplish.

[alabarym]

Nope, the solution was only to replace the boxes with new ones