Cisco wireless controller crashing

[aagarwalcca]

Hi everyone, 

We have a cisco 4400 series wireless Lan controller with software 4.2.207.0.  This controller is been in one of our building and is working for years without any issues. Recently I started noticing that it was responding quite slow but was manageable. But in past few days the controller has gotten so slow that I cannot even ssh into it. I can ping it. I can also establish a connection for SSH but nothing else (It will ask for username but gets stuck there). The web GUI is also not loading.

Since we do web authorization using the controller the clients who are already connected are fine but new clients are not directed towards the log in page and hence cannot access the internet.  Has anyone experienced this before? I hope it is not because it is too old. 

Please advise. 

Regards,

Ankit

[George Stefanick]

I love me some 4.2, it was very good to us. Have you power cycled the box ? Do you know how long the box has been up ? 

[aagarwalcca]

It was up for almost 1 year. I power cycled it and it worked fine for couple hours but went down again. Now I can only see the tabs on Gui but cannot click on anything. Cannot even SSH. (There is no network issue).

"ssh admin@10.225.x.x

(Cisco Controller) "

Thats all I get when I SSH in

only thing I changed in last 2 weeks is the date on the controller so that our old APs can connect to it. 

- Ankit

[George Stefanick]

Makes me wonder if there is a leak. Its been a good while since I touched that code rev. There are a few commands 

show cpu that could help if you had access to the CLI

Also if you could check the logs on the GUI that might be telling 

Changing the date could or couldn't not being causing a problem. If you made this change and then this started perhaps related. Anyway you can switch back for giggles? What APs models do you have ?

[aagarwalcca]

I was able to get into the controller tab. I was able to get the following information. But it is just painfully slow. 

urrent CPU Usage

1%

System Buffers
Max Free Buffers	4608
Free Buffers	4602
Buffers In Use	6

Web Server Buffers
Descriptors Allocated	26
Descriptors Used	20
Segments Allocated	26
Segments Used	20

[George Stefanick]

I think 4.2 has a crash file section under management ---> tech support. Can you see if there is anything in there if so copy and paste. 

Im surprised because I expected the CPU to off the rocker. 

So you know -- Cisco has a special bundle you buy (2) 1700/2700/or 3700 aps and you get a FREE 2504 WLC with a 25 license. 

I dont know much about your deployment and not sure if this would fit in .. but wanted to share none the less.

[aagarwalcca]

Thanks Gorge. I really appreciate that you took some time out to reply to my issue. We are a college environment and we will be upgrading the wireless soon.

Also I restarted the box 4th time. This time I did not turn it back on for 5 mins. Now it seems to be ok..I think the controller is getting too old. But I cant find anything related to this issue anywhere online.  Unfortunately we do not have support on it. 

Ankit

[George Stefanick]

No problem my friend. Yea you are in a tight spot with this one with older gear. I expected to see a high CPU. You may need to nurse this thing while you get the new gear in place.