Any difference between soft reboot and hard reboot of switch

[Network_Sarovani]

Hi Experts , 

We are facing below issue , So to restart the switch should we do it from logically from switch or switch should be hard rebooted by site technician ? What is the difference we have between executing the command reload from switch and hard reboot ?

Error Message HARDWARE-1-TCAM_ERROR: [traceback] Found error in [chars] TCAM Space and not able to recover the error.

Recommended Action : Restart the switch.

[pman · Accepted solution]

I think in this case The solution is to hard reboot the switch
and see that this error message does not return.

1) what model name and version is the switch?
2) post show platform tcam utilization
3) post show platform tcam usage
4) post show platform tcam log-results

[Leo Laohoo]

Soft reboot is issuing the "reload" command.

Hard reboot or cold reboot is powering down and then up the platform or line card.  

Is this a line card for the 6500?  

[Jitendra Kumar]

Hardboot:-interrupt the power instantly for each component there may case also corrupt the image file as well.   For example like are we care about our laptop to shutdown properly as there is the disk for the window corrupts.

Soft boot:- we are given instructions to the device as I want to reboot you properly in the manner way each component will restart as per the process.

Error Message HARDWARE-1-TCAM_ERROR: [traceback] Found error in [chars] TCAM Space
and not able to recover the error
Explanation The switch cannot fix a ternary content addressable memory (TCAM) integrity error.
[chars] is memory location with the error: Unassigned TCAM Space, HFTM TCAM Space (the ASIC
forwarding TCAM manager space), or HQATM TCAM Space (the TCAM ASIC quality of service
[QoS] and access control list [ACL] TCAM manager space).

Recommended Action Restart the switch

[marce1000]

 -  Hard  reboot usually meaning from power-up (again) (too) , power cycled , will also run the device self-tests , which can be useful in the context of the error you are observing. Attach a console to the device before that and observe the results of the self tests on the console afterwards.

 M.

[Network_Sarovani]

So in this case Hard reboot or soft reboot ? 

[marce1000]

 - Hard reboot , but follow instructions as mentioned in my previous reply too.

 M.

[Leo Laohoo]

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@Network_Sarovani wrote:

So in this case Hard reboot or soft reboot ? 

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No one will be able to determine without knowing the complete story.  

What is this line card? 
What IOS version?
What is the exact error message?

[Joseph W. Doherty]

Whether you need a power cycle reboot or a software reboot, depends both on the error and what the switch does during power on vs. software boots.  On some devices, basically they are the same, on others, the software reload (as noted by others) doesn't do all the power on hardware quick tests.

For your platform, there might be documentation on that error whether you the "restart the switch" means a full power cycle reboot.

Also BTW, some Cisco devices support an optional warm software restart.  This, I recall, skips the all power on tests, and skips some of the normal boot process, like loading a copy of the IOS into RAM.  (Basically, it just resets the IOS data structures to match a boot's setup.)

[Network_Sarovani]

Hi Everyone , 

Issue has been resolved after Hard reboot of all switch stack...

Thank you