Thank you both for these posts and thanks James for taking the time to get back on and document the tftp method. And I agree, EPIC fail for not including these methods in the config guides. If you have 3 methods to do this why do you only document the most onerous one? C'mon Cisco!
I just wanted to add a couple of notes.
USB method
I never got this to work. The 15.0(2) config guide states that the largest USB drive the 2960S supports is 1GB and the smallest I have available is 8GB. Where do you find a 1GB USB stick anymore? In any case I used Win7 and diskpart to create a 1GB partion and format it as FAT16. I found the procedure here:
http://superuser.com/questions/202160/how-do-i-format-my-8-gig-usb-drive-to-fat-fat16-in-windows-7
But it is reproduced here:
DISKPART> list disk
Disk ### Status Size Free Dyn Gpt
-------- ------------- ------- ------- --- ---
Disk 0 Online 298 GB 0 B
Disk 1 Online 7640 MB 0 B
DISKPART> select disk 1
Disk 1 is now the selected disk.
DISKPART> list part
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
Partition 1 Primary 7636 MB 4032 KB
DISKPART> clean
DiskPart succeeded in cleaning the disk.
DISKPART> list part
There are no partitions on this disk to show.
DISKPART> create part primary size =1024
DiskPart succeeded in creating the specified partition.
DISKPART> list part
Partition ### Type Size Offset
------------- ---------------- ------- -------
* Partition 1 Primary 1024 MB 1024 KB
DISKPART> active
DiskPart marked the current partition as active.
DISKPART> format fs=fat quick
100 percent completed
DiskPart successfully formatted the volume.
DISKPART> assign
DiskPart successfully assigned the drive letter or mount point.
DISKPART> exit
Leaving DiskPart...
I then copied a .bin image over and tried to read it with ROMMON but I got these errors:
switch: dir
ERR: !CSWSIGNATURE
ERR: !CSWSIGNATURE
ERR: Device NOT ready
ERR: =PHASE
ERR: Read ERROR start 0 blks 1
ERR: =PHASE
ERR: Read ERROR start 0 blks 1
ERR: =PHASE
ERR: Read ERROR start 0 blks 1
usbflash0: contains unexpected values in partition table or boot sector.
Device needs formatting before use!
Not to be outsmarted, I inserted the USB in a fully booted 2960 and formatted it with the IOS format command. Then I copied the .bin back onto it and inserted it back into the switch in ROMMON mode. I received the same errors. Ok time to move on. I don't like to fail but I don't have all day!
TFTP method
I got this working in fairly short order. The only thing I want to say about this is that after setting the IP address and gateway do NOT try pinging TO the switch that is in ROMMON mode from something else... it will not respond. Instead ping FROM the switch. This caused me a little grief before I figured that out.
-Jeff
.png "Arumugam Muthaiah"){kind=avatar}
