How to recover cisco catalyst 3850 software image from another Switch?

[hogr fatih]

Hey Everyone!

I accidently factory reset one of the switches and used command "factory-reset all" instead of just a config. Now I lost the software image in the flash/: and lost all the pkg files inside the flash.

how I can recover the software image from the same switch version on the stack and load it up again?

Any help will be appreciated. you can look at the output in the image attached

switch: dir flash
unable to stat flash/: no such device

[MHM Cisco World]

Copy the ios from working SW to tftp then copy from tftp to SW (factory reset)

[hogr fatih]

Thanks Sir for the reply but our company doesn't let use tftp application on the PC otherwise I had this idea in mind to copy the files but unfortunately is not allowed 

[Ramblin Tech]

Can you be "creative" in solving this dilemma? A Raspberry Pi Zero might cost $20-30 USD and can be configured as a tftp server. Would it be a security violation to call such a Pi Zero a "flash recover appliance", connect it to the Cat 3850 (after disconnecting the 3850 from your company network), and pull in the IOS image via the console?

I used to keep a Pi Zero around for just this purpose of being a tftp server in a lab when I needed one quickly.

[hogr fatih]

Thanks Ramblin I found cisco flash usb I think that will be better to recover from it! I really don't have a time to order Pi Zero and use it by today

[Dustin Anderson]

Assuming you can download the bin file from cisco, download and put on a flash drive, you should be able to have it boot from the flash and then once booted run the install command to install it to the flash.

This happened to us years ago, and I think the cavate is you couldn't install from the booted file, so may have to copy the bin to flash then install from there, but should be able to recover that way.

Found this recovery info:

https://community.cisco.com/t5/networking-knowledge-base/recovering-from-a-3850-boot-failure/ta-p/3136638 

[Flavio Miranda]

Hi @hogr fatih 

 Usb drive might help you.

[hogr fatih]

I tried the flash and it show below error 

switch: boot usbflash0:packages.conf

Getting rest of image
Reading full image into memory...Check base package header ...: done = 16384
Getting rest of image
Reading full image into memory....done
Reading full base package into memory...: done = 32794466
Bundle Image
--------------------------------------
Kernel Address : 0x556e33c4
Kernel Size : 0x438356/4424534
Initramfs Address : 0x55b1b71a
Initramfs Size : 0x1ab5848/28006472
Compression Format: mzip

usbflash0:packages.conf: boot path not allowed to boot package
Boot process failed...

[Flavio Miranda]

@hogr fatih does you switch run in bundle mode or install mode?

 If they run in bundle mode you need to copy the bin file to a pen driver.

 You may check other switch with command show version

[MHM Cisco World]

.conf <<- this file for run/startup config not for IOS image as I know 

[Leo Laohoo · Accepted solution]

emergency-install usbflash0:cat3k_caa-universalk9.16.12.08.SPA.bin

[hogr fatih]

Thanks Leo!
I was able to solve with above command you mentioned appreciate it.