flash space is enough to upgrade to new ios ?

[kevin2001]

Hi, The switch 2960 has space 20,922,880b. the new ios size is 17,769KB, after transferring, switch would have about 3.6MB left, it should work, but the left space would be a little bit small. how do you think about it?

2#dir
Directory of flash:/

2 -rwx 12414 Apr 4 2025 08:43:39 -04:00 config.text
3 -rwx 1096 Feb 20 2024 12:28:11 -05:00 vlan.dat
611 -rwx 2098 Apr 4 2025 08:43:39 -04:00 private-config.text
4 -rwx 16563200 Nov 20 2021 08:13:22 -05:00 c2960c405ex-universalk9-mz.152-2a.E1.bin
5 -rwx 4120 Apr 4 2025 08:43:39 -04:00 multiple-fs
6 drwx 512 Feb 28 1993 20:18:12 -05:00 c2960c405ex-universalk9-mz.150-2.SE5
609 -rwx 13768 Dec 10 2021 14:46:17 -05:00 startup121021

57931776 bytes total (20922880 bytes free)

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

Download the TAR file and use the following command: 

archive download-sw /OVERWRITE tftp://<TFTP_IP_ADDRESS>/filename.tar

The key option is "/overwrite" which means the process will delete the older IOS sub-directory.  

Another option to use in combo with "/overwrite" is "/imageonly": 

archive download-sw /overwrite /IMAGEONLY tftp://<TFTP_IP_ADDRESS>/filename.tar

The process will only unpack the "BIN" file and will not unpack the HTML files.  

[kevin2001]

Thanks, it should work

but .tar file is much bigger

[Joseph W. Doherty]

It is, but a gotcha you need to be aware of, depending on the device, other "things", like firmware upgrades, may be in the TAR and installed during an upgrade.  So, just copying over a .bin and booting it, might be problematic.  (Hopefully, release notes would describe a dependency.)

One interesting gotcha I bumped into, I was upgrading a 3750 (E or X, forget which) and noticed in the physical console output, a firmware update was failing because I had so little free flash space, and the installer would create a temporary file with the firmware in it, deleted after that upgrade, but was unable to create that temporary file.

[Jens Albrecht · Accepted solution]

Hi @kevin2001,

let's start with your initial question regarding the remaining space.
For these good old IOS switches it is no problem to have a remaining space of about 3.6MB or even less. As long as there is enough space to upload the new image you can go ahead. After rebooting the new image you can then delete the old image if you feel more comfortable having some extra space.

Yes, the TAR-files are always much bigger because they do not only contain the BIN-file that you can download separately as well, but the TAR-files also contain the WebGUI that you can use on these platforms. This GUI is based on the Cisco Configuration Professional for Catalyst and is the same kind of GUI that you see e.g. on the Catalyst 1300 series.

So if you want to use the WebGUI, then you have to download and install the TAR-file because the version of the GUI must match the version of the BIN-file, i.e. the IOS version itself. The archive command to install the TAR-file is mentioned by Leo above and this command also sets the boot variable to the new version.

Based on the output that you posted you currently have 2 IOS versions on this switch. For version 15.2.2aE1 there is only the BIN-file on you switch, while version 15.0.2SE5 shows a directory so that it probably includes the WebGUI as well (there should be a HTML directory in this case with some files and further sub-directories).

If you do not use the WebGUI, then simply upload the new BIN-file and set the boot variable accordingly.
In that case I would also delete the oldest version 15.0.2SE5 as the WebGUI consumes a lot of space. In order to delete the corresponding directory including all sub-directories you can use the following command:

delete /force /recursive flash:/c2960c405ex-universalk9-mz.150-2.SE5

This command instantly removes a directory including all files and subdirectories without asking for further confirmation so always use it with caution.

HTH!