Cisco SPA5XX phones with SPA500S sidecar BLF issue

[andyledet]

We have several Cisco SPA504G phones with a SPA500S sidecar attached.  All 32 buttons on the sidecar are configured as BLF keys.  Occasionally, sometimes 10 times a day, the lights on the Sidecar (lights 3 thru 7) will blink red for a few seconds, then go back into normal mode where they display green if the extension is idle or red if in-use.  These phones are being used with a Metaswitch.  All phone sets with sidecars at this customer's site do this blinking light thing at exactly the same time.  The phones are all using firmware 7.5.1a.  I've added a test phone to the business group on another network and it also has this problem.  Has anyone else seen this issue before?   Do you have a suggestion for a fix?  

[Glenn Martin]

Hi Andy,

I've move this discussion to Small Business Voice and Conference community. For greater visibility please ensure you post to the appropriate community for the increased visibility.

Thanks,

Glenn

[Dan Lukes]

7.5.1a is rather ancient firmware. so tart with upgrade hen try again,

[andyledet]

Dan, thanks for the suggestion.  I took your advice and upgraded the phones to version 7.6.0 which

is Cisco's latest firmware for these phones and the same issue happens.

[Dan Lukes]

Thus we can debug.

Turn o syslog&debug messages, highest level. Capture them as well as SIP packets sent/received by phone. It should help us to analyze the issue.

[Dan Miley]

check your provisioning files from metaswitch and see if they are back-revved

the beginning line that says <flat profile>  will frequently have a firmware version of the provisioning file.

here's an example showing 7.4.9

-<flat-profile xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sipura.net/xsd/SPA50x-30x-SIP http://www.sipura.net/xsd/SPA50x-30x-SIP/SPA50x-30x-SIP-7-4-9.xsd"; xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 

if the provisioning file is from a different hardware or software version, unexpected things may happen.

options may be 

-   factory reset and manually reconfigure, do not put a profile rule and loose management of the config from the metaswitch.. You can do one phone to test.  Just don't put in the 'profile rule parm'

- Update the provsioning files to the same as the firmware being used, This is done using the SPC tool,-or using the http://ip/spacfg.xml as a template to create a new config file.  Or having metaswitch update rrent provisioning drivers.

- downgrade the phones to the firmware supported by metaswitch.

the provisionoing guide has more details about config files, spc tool for creating them,etc.

Cisco IP Telephony Devices Provisioning Guide - Cisco Support Community

Hope this helps.

dlm...

[Dan Lukes]

flat-profile xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sipura.net/xsd/SPA50x-30x-SIP http://www.sipura.net/xsd/SPA50x-30x-SIP/SPA50x-30x-SIP-7-4-9.xsd"; xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 

As far as I know, the Cisco never published .xsd file for newer version. And  neither http://www.sipura.net/xsd/SPA50x-30x-SIP nor http://www.sipura.net/xsd/SPA50x-30x-SIP/SPA50x-30x-SIP-7-4-9.xsd exists anymore. 

If you find a provisioning file with such header, then any of following conclusion may apply:

• author doesn't understand/care the meaning of such header at all
• author considered "better bad header than no header"
• it's ancient provisioning file and no one updated it once referred schema files has been deleted

It's rather fearless to make assumption related to target firmware version based on such header.

if the provisioning file is from a different hardware or software version, unexpected things may happen.

Provisioning file created for older firmware should not cause issues on newer firmware. Default values of added tags are "reasonable" most of time and deleted tags are causing no problem as they are silently ignored. 

Of course, incompatibility should not be rejected at all as possible issue cause, but I feel it's rather theoretical possibility.