I recently attempted to upgrade our WLC environment (5508 and 15+ 2602 APs) and hit a few issues and was wondering if anyone else has encountered anything similar?
My starting point was 7.3.112.0 on our WLC with a planned upgrade path of:
7.3.112.0 > 7.4.150 > 8.0.152.0 > 8.3.143.0 > 8.5.131.0
In case of issues and to allow a swift rollback, I powered off all APs except 2 during each upgrade hop
I updated FUS to 1.9.0.0 first and then WLC to 7.4.145.0 which was fine.
I then updated the WLC to 8.0.152.0.
When the 2 test APs attempted to update, they bricked with a red flashing LED.
Console access to the devices showed the following output:
--------------------------------------------
IOS Bootloader - Starting system.
flash is writable
FLASH CHIP: Numonyx Mirrorbit (0089)
Xmodem file system is available.
flashfs[0]: 13 files, 5 directories
flashfs[0]: 0 orphaned files, 0 orphaned directories
flashfs[0]: Total bytes: 31997952
flashfs[0]: Bytes used: 12638208
flashfs[0]: Bytes available: 19359744
flashfs[0]: flashfs fsck took 16 seconds.
Reading cookie from SEEPROM
Base Ethernet MAC address: 4c:4e:35:03:4b:fb
Ethernet speed is 1000 Mb - FULL Duplex
Loading "flash:/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6"...flash:/ap3g2- k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6: no such file or directory
Error loading "flash:/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6"
Interrupt within 5 seconds to abort boot process.
Loading "flash:/update/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.153-3.JA12/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.153-3.JA12"...#### #####################
File "flash:/update/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.153-3.JA12/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.153-3.JA12" uncompressed and installed, entry point: 0x2003000
executing...
Secondary Bootloader - Starting system.
Tide MB - 32MB of flash
Xmodem file system is available.
flashfs[0]: 13 files, 5 directories
flashfs[0]: 0 orphaned files, 0 orphaned directories
flashfs[0]: Total bytes: 31997952
flashfs[0]: Bytes used: 12638208
flashfs[0]: Bytes available: 19359744
flashfs[0]: flashfs fsck took 9 seconds.
flashfs[1]: 0 files, 1 directories
flashfs[1]: 0 orphaned files, 0 orphaned directories
flashfs[1]: Total bytes: 12257280
flashfs[1]: Bytes used: 1024
flashfs[1]: Bytes available: 12256256
flashfs[1]: flashfs fsck took 0 seconds.
Base Ethernet MAC address: 4c:4e:35:03:4b:fb
2600/3600 AP, PID: 'AIR-CAP2602I-E-K9 '. Checking for BL upgrade...
BL: C2600 Boot Loader (AP3G2-BOOT-M) LoaderVersion 12.4(25e)JA1, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)
Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Compiled Wed 30-May-12 03:34 by binugopa
BL Build year: 12
De-compress 'flash:/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6/ap3g2-bl-2600' to 'ram:/ap3g2-bl'...
File not found: flash:/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6/ap3g2-bl-2600
Boot CMD: 'boot flash:/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6/ap3g2-k9w8-xx.152-2.JB6;flash:/update/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.153-3.JA12/ap3g2-k9w8-xx.153-3.JA12'
Loading "flash:/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6/ap3g2-k9w8-xx.152-2.JB6"...flash:/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6/ap3g2-k9w8-xx.152-2.JB6: no such file or directory
Error loading "flash:/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.152-2.JB6/ap3g2-k9w8-xx.152-2.JB6"
Interrupt within 5 seconds to abort boot process.
Unable to locate IOS image with name **xx**.
Boot CMD: 'flash:/update/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.153-3.JA12/ap3g2-k9w8-xx.153-3.JA12'
Loading "flash:/update/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.153-3.JA12/ap3g2-k9w8-xx.153-3.JA12"...###################
Error loading "flash:/update/ap3g2-k9w8-mx.153-3.JA12/ap3g2-k9w8-xx.153-3.JA12"
Interrupt within 5 seconds to abort boot process.
Boot process failed...
The system is unable to boot automatically. The BOOT
environment variable needs to be set to a bootable
image.
C2600 Boot Loader (AP3G2-BOOT-M) LoaderVersion 12.4(25e)JA1, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)
Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Compiled Wed 30-May-12 03:34 by binugopa
-------------------------------
This appears to be IOS corruption. I was eventually able to recover the AP’s by dismounting them, and factory resetting them via the mode button but, as my maintenance window had then expired, I rolled back the WLC and AP’s to 7.4.150.
Has anyone else encountered issues with 2602’s when going from 7.4.150.0 > 8.0.152.0?
I have looked into maybe pre downloading the AP image to the APs instead to see if this helps, but this isn’t supported for this upgrade hop (7.4.150 > 8.0.152.0) as per this document:
https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/8-3/config-guide/b_cg83/b_cg83_chapter_0101.html#ID1266
If you upgrade from a release that is prior to Release 7.5 directly to Release 7.6.X or a later release, the predownload process on Cisco AP2600 and AP3600 fails. After the Cisco WLC is upgraded to Release 7.6.X or a later release, the new image is loaded on Cisco AP2600 and AP3600. After the upgrade to a Release 7.6.X image, the predownload functionality works as expected. The predownload failure is only a one-time failure.
