AP803 stuck in ROMMON

[Etienne Buxin]

Hi,

we have a IR829 with an integrated AP803. The router works fine but when we reverse telnet in the router to gain access to the console of the AP, we see that the AP803 is stuck in ROMMON.

When we do boot, the AP tries to boot its firmware but after a few seconds we get the following:

bad mzip file, unknown zip method

Error loading "flash:/ap1g3-k9w7-mx.153-3.JD4/ap1g3-k9w7-mx.153-3.JD4"

Now we try to upload a new firmware to the AP, by default it has the following IP parameters:

ap: set
IOS_STATIC_DEFAULT_GATEWAY=10.0.0.1
IOS_STATIC_IP_ADDR=10.0.0.4
IOS_STATIC_NETMASK=255.255.255.224
MANUAL_BOOT=no
RELOAD_REASON=41
ROM_PERSISTENT_UTC=730944398

But I can in no way reach that IP 10.0.0.4 from the router, i configured IP address 10.0.0.1/27 on vlan 1 of the router and since vlan 1 is the default vlan on interface Wlan-GigabitEthernet0 (the data link to the router) it should work, but it does not.

I also tried to configure that IP on wlan-ap 0 but no success.

Has anybody any idea how we can reach the AP IP address from the router? This way we could use TFTP from ROMMON to download another firmware on the AP.

regards,

Etienne

[Leo Laohoo]

Reboot the appliance (as in complete hard reboot).
Those AP has a hardened/hidden partition that contains an RCV image and will only pop out after a complete reboot.

[Etienne Buxin]

Hi Leo,

thanks for your advice; unfortunately we have reboot the router (power off / power on) several times and we always get the same: router boots correctly but the embedded AP ends in ROMMON (ap: prompt)

regards,

Etienne

[HaifengLi]

I hope the following documents can help you solve the problem.

https://community.cisco.com/t5/wireless-mobility-documents/access-point-rommon-recovery-ap-prompt-recovery-example/ta-p/3119495

[Etienne Buxin]

Thank you for your reply. Sadly it does not help. The problem seems to be a L2 issue: I can never have connectivity between the laptop and the AP. Or even between the IR829 router and its embedded AP803 access point.

If I assign an IP address to the router/laptop in the same range as the AP (10.0.0.0/27) and then ping to the AP address, the router/laptop does not even get an ARP reply from the AP.

I also found a recovery procedure for AP802 (i think it was embedded in the 819 routers) but in this case the router had direct access to the AP flash; which is not the case with IR829/AP803.

regards,

Etienne

[patoberli]

Might be a hardware defect. Normal APs have 10 years of hardware warranty, not sure about the IR829, but might be worth a check.

[israelc]

When you say "no way reach that IP 10.0.0.4 from the router", are you trying to ping the router from the AP in Rommon? If that is the case, that would never happen. Now, make sure that the router side can ping the TFTP/FTP server or PC where the new code is. You need to elaborate more about how you are trying to download the new code to the AP, so I can have an idea where the problem is.

Regards,

[Etienne Buxin]

Problem is when the AP is in ROMON, it has an IP address / mask / gateway, but the AP is not able to ping the router, even when the router has an interface in the same subnet. I tried to configure that IP on all possible layer 3 interfaces of the router, but no luck.

We had to RMA the router so I'm not able to test further now.

[Etienne Buxin]

I mean "the router is not able to ping the router". Ping from the AP when in ROMMON is not possible since there is no ping command in ROMMON