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Catalyst 3560 Switch Software Configuration Guide
OL-8553-06
Appendix B Working with the Cisco IOS File System, Configuration Files, and Software Images
Working with Software Images
Image Location on the Switch
The Cisco IOS image is stored as a .bin file in a directory that shows the version number. A subdirectory
contains the files needed for web management. The image is stored on the system board flash memory
(flash:).
You can use the show version privileged EXEC command to see the software version that is currently
running on your switch. In the display, check the line that begins with System image file is... . It
shows the directory name in flash memory where the image is stored.
You can also use the dir filesystem: privileged EXEC command to see the directory names of other
software images that might be stored in flash memory.The archive download-sw /directory privileged
EXEC command allows you to specify a directory one time followed by a tar file or list of tar files to be
downloaded instead of specifying complete paths with each tar file.
tar File Format of Images on a Server or Cisco.com
Software images located on a server or downloaded from Cisco.com are provided in a tar file format,
which contains these files:
An info file, which serves as a table of contents for the tar file
One or more subdirectories containing other images and files, such as Cisco IOS images and web
management files
This example shows some of the information contained in the info file. Tabl e B-3 provides additional
details about this information:
system_type:0x00000000:image-name
image_family:xxxx
stacking_number:x
info_end:
version_suffix:xxxx
version_directory:image-name
image_system_type_id:0x00000000
image_name:image-nameB.bin
ios_image_file_size:6398464
total_image_file_size:8133632
image_feature:IP|LAYER_3|PLUS|MIN_DRAM_MEG=128
image_family:xxxx
stacking_number:x
board_ids:0x401100c4 0x00000000 0x00000001 0x00000003 0x00000002 0x00008000 0x00008002
0x40110000
info_end:
Note Disregard the stacking_number field. It does not apply to the switch.
Tab l e B-3 info File Description
Field Description
version_suffix Specifies the Cisco IOS image version string suffix
version_directory Specifies the directory where the Cisco IOS image and the HTML subdirectory are installed
image_name Specifies the name of the Cisco IOS image within the tar file
ios_image_file_size Specifies the Cisco IOS image size in the tar file, which is an approximate measure of how
much flash memory is required to hold just the Cisco IOS image