Mode button does not start CLI switch prompt

McWaffel · ‎02-05-2021

Hello everyone,

We were trying to recover the password of one of our Catalyst 3560 switches. The doc says to hold down the mode button for 15s while reconnecting the power to the switch and releasing once the SYST LED has turned solid green.

The LED does not turn solid green. Ever.
If we continue to hold the button for a longer time, the switch does nothing. The SYST LED will continue to flash green forever. At least we gave up after it had not booted or shown anything on the serial CLI after 10+min.

If we release the button after 15s, three things happened:
1. The switch does not do anything, like explained above
2. The switch will boot normally and bring up the interfaces
3. The switch will actually give us the CLI switch prompt

However, the third option only worked once out of 15+ tries and crashed immediately afterwards. We could not send any more commands to the switch.

I am almost positive that the documentation is incorrect. What else can we try here?

Thanks for your replies in advance.

marce1000 · ‎02-05-2021

- What crash-message do you observe, preferably post output from the console.

M.

-- Each morning when I wake up and look into the mirror I always say ' Why am I so brilliant ? '
When the mirror will then always repond to me with ' The only thing that exceeds your brilliance is your beauty! '

McWaffel · ‎02-05-2021

There's no message at all when the switch "crashes". It just freezes/stays in this SYST-LED-blinking-state forever. When it boots normally we see it bringing up the interfaces. That one time it got us to the "switch: " prompt, the console automatically tried to initialize the connection and we only got gibberish back. Non-ASCII-characters on the screen everywhere.

marce1000 · ‎02-05-2021

- Console logs or screenshots may help to determine the issue further.

M.

-- Each morning when I wake up and look into the mirror I always say ' Why am I so brilliant ? '
When the mirror will then always repond to me with ' The only thing that exceeds your brilliance is your beauty! '

McWaffel · ‎02-05-2021

Like I said, there is no useful output.

Georg Pauwen · ‎02-05-2021

Hello,

power on the switch and wait until it is finished, then press the Mode button (for 10 seconds)...

Does that make a difference ?

McWaffel · ‎02-05-2021

Thanks for the tip. I will try it out next time I can go on site and get to the switch; due to covid we are currently heavily restricted from accessing the hardware. I'll update you asap