upgrading cisco 2960 X switch & deleting .bin in flash

[SJ K]

Hi all,

This may sound silly..  but so here it goes .. ->

We know that IOS image/bin is store in the flash: directory.  It is then located and loaded into memory/dram during startup.

q1) Is the entire IOS or just certain part of it being loaded into the memory  (and read as required from the .bin file by the running kernel during runtime) ?

q2) reason for asking the above is that I wished to upload a new IOS image, but does not have enough space in flash. Can I delete the existing .bin file of the current running IOS without causing any disruption and still  have the switch run as normal   (until I set boot to the newly uploaded .bin and reboot)

Regards,

Noob

[Reza Sharifi · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Yes, you can.  The key is not to reboot until you have loaded the new IOS, set the boot variable, verified and have saved the config.

If you are doing this for a business, do it after hours just in case something goes wrong.

HTH

[SJ K]

Thanks Reza!

[bishnubisoyi51]

Hi SJ K,

You can delete the old IOS and add new IOS. 

Make sure the device is not rebooted during the time IOS up-gradation.

BNB

[Mark Vaillancourt]

I've been using this for a while (using a TFTP server):

archive download-sw /overwrite /reload tftp://172.17.XXX.XXX/c2960x-universalk9-tar.152-4.E2.tar

It downloads and installs the specified ios version, deletes the old version and reboots the switch when it's done. Replace the 'XXX' with the actual IP address of the TFTP server, obviously.