Software crash after incomplete VSS migration

[plgingembre]

Hi everyone,

We are experiencing an issue on a migration of a Cat6k chassis to VSS. We have migrated without any issue the first chassis but the second chassis is stopping his boot sequence just after the RP has extracted the IOS image (going down to Bootstrap and ROMMON).

When the VSL comes up, we can see this log on the console :

Oct 18 18:04:16: %PFREDUN-SW2_SP-1-VTP_CONFIG_DISLOCATE: VTP config file must be in default location for standby supervisor to come online

In the running config of the ACTIVE chassis, we can observe the "vtp file vtpconfig" which seems to be an issue for VSS integration of the second Cat6k.

Furthermore, after this software crash, the config register of the RP is modifed from 0x2102 to 0x0, and if we power off/on the chassis, it stays in ROMMON until you manually boot it specifying the chosen IOS image.

If you have any ideas, thanks for your help.

Pierre-Louis

[Naveen Venkateshaiah]

Hi Pierre,

Post you boot the Sup manualy from Rommon mode , the SUPboots up?

IF so once its up, Go to

VSS#config t

VSS(conf)#config-register 0X2102

VSS# exit

VSS#wr

And check for config rester value set for next reload. to 0x2102

sh ver

remote command switch show ver(for SP)

Both should be set to 0x2102

Save and The try reload , sup should come up.

Regards,

Naveen.

[Leo Laohoo]

it stays in ROMMON until you manually boot it specifying the chosen IOS image.

That is a normal behaviour of the 6500 supervisor card.  If you don't have a boot statement OR if your boot statement is pointing to an invalid IOS then the supervisor card will go into ROMmon.

stopping his boot sequence just after the RP has extracted the IOS image (going down to Bootstrap and ROMMON).

Maybe the IOS is corrupt.  Either check the MD5 value of the current IOS that's having issues or re-download the file from Cisco website.  If you do re-download the IOS, make sure you check/verify the MD5 hash of the file.

[plgingembre]

Hi all,

Thanks for your replies.

You're quite right concerning Config Register (the good value is the one you mentioned), but the issue was not there...

In fact, we finally managed to convert the chassis in VSS, but we had to modify the running-config concerning vtp. Indeed, vtp was configured with a non-default location (vtp file xxxxx) and a best practice guide on redundant supervisor mentioned that it was incompatible with the insertion of a dual supervisor engine (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/switches/lan/catalyst6500/ios/12.2SX/best/practices/recommendations.html#wp1041218). As you already know (or not), VSS is considered as a Dual Supervisor but physically separated in two different chassis, so this vtp incompatibility applied to our case too...

After erasing vtp file xxx entry in the running-config (with no downtiome on the production environment), the conversion in VSS mode was ok without any additional issue. A few reboot was done, no other issue on config-register parameters.

That's not explaining why the config-register was modified every time we tried to convert the standalone chassis to VSS, but the fact is that since we modified the vtp file location, we had no more issues.

Thanks for your comments/replies and hope that will help somebody else.

/plg