Help with 7961G Phones

[ryan.l.elliott]

I have several Cisco 7961G phone's that I'm trying to get setup with a CCM located in a separate geographical location. The CCM is attempting to push the SCCP 9.2.1 update to the phones which was taking forever and a day due to slow link connectivity. So I took a laptop and setup TFTPD32 on it, downloaded the 9.2.1 update files, pointed TFTPD32 to the appropriate directory and went to work upgrading three phones. Two of them took the update, but then were not getting network connectivity. They would pull IP's via DHCP but I could never PING them, so, after erasing the network settings and resetting the phones several times, I attempted to do a factory reset by holding the # key while booting and then using the 123456789*0# option. Now, neither phone will boot up properly or allow me to re-flash the firmware. If I boot either phone while plugged into the laptop, they will grab an IP address, the Speaker light will come on, but then the screen will go blank and I will not show any network connectivity on the laptop nor any new entries in the TFTPD32 logs. The third phone failed updating the firmware initially and is now showing the same symptoms as the other two. I've read that several people have been able to revive their phones using the TFTPD32 method.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Adrian Saavedra]

Hi Ryan,

Just an idea: you can take advantage of the Peer Firmware Sharing feature when downloading new firmware over low bandwidth links: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/voicesw/ps6882/ps6884/white_paper_c11-583891_ps10453_Products_White_Paper.html

Just to comment, remember that SCCP firmware upgrades from firmware release versions earlier than 8.3(3) to version 9.2(1) or greater, you must first upgrade your firmware to an intermediate version (8.3(3) - 8.5(2)) then upgrade to 9.2(1).

Hope to help, please remember to rate the post if it does.

Regards,

- Adrian.

[Adrian Saavedra]

Besides PFS, you can give a try using this other method: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/voice_ip_comm/cucm/srnd/8x/endpnts.html#wp1156354

"One method is to use a local TFTP server just for the upgrades. The administrator can place a TFTP server in branch offices (particularly in branches that have a larger number of phones, or whose WAN link is not speedy or robust), and can configure the phones in those offices to use that particular TFTP server just for new firmware. With this change, phones will retrieve new firmware locally. This upgrade method would require the administrator to pre-load the phone firmware on the TFTP server in the branch and manually configure the TFTP server address in the "load server" parameter in the affected phone configurations. Note that the branch router may be used as a TFTP server."

Load Server parameter in Device -> Phone configuration:

"Indicates that the phone will use an alternative server to obtain firmware loads and upgrades, rather than the defined TFTP server. This option enables you to indicate a local server to be used for firmware upgrades, which can assist in reducing install times, particularly for upgrades over a WAN. Enter the hostname or the IP address (using standard IP addressing format) of the server. The indicated server must be running TFTP services and have the load file in the TFTP path. If the load file is not found, the load will not install. The phone will not be redirected to the TFTP server. If this field is left blank, the phone will use the designated TFTP server to obtain its load files and upgrades"

Hope to help,

- Adrian.

[ryan.l.elliott]

While I appreciate the help, as stated in my original post, I'm not having issues with getting the phones updated as I've already setup a local tftp server to handle that. The issue I have is with the three phones that I can't get to boot.

Some more amplifying information. Now that the phones are not booting, I have tried several times to use the hold # and then punch in 3491672850*# method to force the phones to download and install the 8.5.2 firmware. The biggest issue is that no matter how I power the phones on, they will achieve network connectivity with the laptop I have setup, however none of the phone's even send out a DHCP request. They just power on, but never do anything besides the speaker icon lighting up for a minute and then everything going blank.

[ryan.l.elliott]

So I managed to get my issues straightened out. I ended up building a crossover cable and connecting it from the phone's SW port to the laptop that I had setup with tftpd32. I pulled the power from the phone, held down the # key, plugged the phone back up, waited for the line lights to go yellow, punched in the "3491672850*#" code, and let the phone sit. After a few minutes the phone would reboot once or twice, pull down an IP from the DHCP server, pull down the firmware files, and successfully upgrade/boot.