Cisco C887VAM-K9 hangs after IOS upgrade

[Matt Wilson]

I have a C887VAM-K9 that had c800-universalk9-mz.SPA.153-3.M3.bin as its IOS boot file. A friend of mine who works for a large company in the IT department was able to download a genuine copy of c800-universalk9-mz.SPA.156-3.M1.bin which I copied from usbflash0: to flash:. After setting the router to boot using:

boot system flash c800-universalk9-mz.SPA.156-3.M1.bin

and reloading it hung. I cold boot restarted and still the same thing. As I had both IOS still in flash, I restarted in ROMMON mode and told it to restart using the original IOS. It did so reporting that 153-3.M3 was being loaded. The problem is it still hangs at the same point. I would have thought that reverting to the existing known good IOS would fix the problem. The router was working perfectly well up until I upgraded the IOS. Does a later IOS do a firmware upgrade too? Can anyone tell me what the problem might be and offer a solution please.

Cheers,

Matt.

[Mark Malone]

Hi

did you capture the output from console as it was booting , it usually give an indication of what may be happening ?

[Matt Wilson]

Will do. I'll post tomorrow.

[Matt Wilson]

I think I figured out why my C887 wouldn't load corretly with 15.6(3)M1:

ADSL/VDSL Embedded Firmware and SDK Change with Cisco IOS Release15.6(3)M

The ISR800 and ISR G2 which run the IOS release 15M/T is integrated with the DSL Firmware 35J for DSL Annex(es) A/M and 35J for Annex B/J. With Cisco IOS Release 15.6(3)M, the plan is to change the embedded BRCM Firmware in IOS to 39Tfor Annex A/M and 38r1 for Annex B/J. This change will affect only the 880/890 and ISR G2+EHWIC SKUs which carry the BRCM6368 chipset. There is also a plan to upgrade the current SDK version, which is used to compile the Firmware. The SDK version for bootloader and embedded LINUX must be 4.14L.04A. If you plan to migrate to Cisco IOS Release 15.6(3)M or later releases, you must use the embedded 39T FW version or later, compiled with the newer SDK. You can continue to use the available Firmware versions if you are on Cisco IOS Release 15.6(2)T or earlier releases.

Thanks for your help.

[Matt Wilson]

Hi Mark, here's the output:

rommon 12 > boot usbflash0:c800-universalk9-mz.SPA.153-3.M3.bin

IOS Image Load Test 
___________________ 
Digitally Signed Production Software 
Self decompressing the image : ######... [OK]
*** No sreloc section
Smart Init is enabled
smart init is sizing iomem
 TYPE MEMORY_REQ
 Onboard devices &
 buffer pools 0x022ECEC0 
-----------------------------------------------
 TOTAL: 0x022ECEC0

Rounded IOMEM up to: 34Mb.
Using 6 percent iomem. [34Mb/512Mb]

 Restricted Rights Legend

Use, duplication, or disclosure by the Government is
blah, blah....

 cisco Systems, Inc.
 170 West Tasman Drive
 San Jose, California 95134-1706



Cisco IOS Software, C800 Software (C800-UNIVERSALK9-M), Version 15.3(3)M3, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)
Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Copyright (c) 1986-2014 by Cisco Systems, Inc.
Compiled Wed 28-May-14 07:24 by prod_rel_team

It then just stops. I've given it 1/2 an hour to respond but nothing. In the above code I've loaded it from usbflash0: but get the same result if it is loaded from flash:. 15.3(M3) is the original IOS that was on the device. I backed flash: up to usbflas0: before I attempted the IOS upgrade so as to be able to reverse it if I needed to, or so I thought.

Directory of flash:

16730 68176296 -rw- c800-universalk9-mz.SPA.153-3.M3.bin
33375  2798822 -rw- VA_A_38k1_B_38h_24g1.bin
3          684 -rw- vlan.dat
1882         0 drw- syslog
3070  93782456 -rw- c800-universalk9-mz.SPA.156-3.M1.bin
rommon 10 > boot flash:c800-universalk9-mz.SPA.153-3.M3.bin

Directory of usbflash0:

2865  68176296 -rw- c800-universalk9-mz.SPA.153-3.M3.bin
4946   2798822 -rw- VA_A_38k1_B_38h_24g1.bin
2     93782456 -rw- c800-universalk9-mz.SPA.156-3.M1.bin
rommon 12 > boot usbflash0:c800-universalk9-mz.SPA.153-3.M3.bin

Is there any form of a hard reset I could use? Any thoughts?

Matt.

[Mark Malone]

It looks like its freezing during boot which usually indicates a hardware problem ,you could try format the flash and reupload but it may need to be replaced if it continuously hangs like that

[Matt Wilson]

Thanks Mark. I haven't had a lot of time lately to try and figure this one out but will try your suggestion in the next couple of days and post back.

Matt.