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Catalyst 2960 Switch SoftwareConfiguration Guide
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Chapter31 Troubleshooting
Recovering from a Software Failure
Recovering from a Software Failure
Switch software can be corrupted during an upgrade, by downloading the w rong file to the switch, and
by deleting the image file. In all of these cases, the switch does not pass the power-on self-test (POST),
and there is no connectivity.
This procedure uses the Xmodem Protocol to recover from a co rrupt or wrong image file. There are many
software packages that support the Xmodem Protocol, and this procedure is largely dependent on the
emulation software that you are using.
This recovery procedure requires that you have physical access to the switch.
Step1 From your PC, download the software image tar file (image_filename.tar) from Cisco.com.
The Cisco IOS image is stored as a bin file in a directory in the tar file. For information about locating
the software image files on Cisco.com, see the release notes.
Step2 Extract the bin file from the tar file.
•If you are using Windows, use a zip program that can read a tar file. Use the zip program to navigate
to and extract the bin file.
•If you are using UNIX, follow these steps:
1. Display the contents of the tar file by using the tar -tvf <image_filename.tar> UNIX command.
switch% tar -tvf
image_filename.tar
2. Locate the bin file, and extract it by using the tar -xvf <image_filename.tar>
<image_filename.bin> UNIX command.
switch% tar -xvf
image_filename.tar
image_filename.bin
x c2960-lanbase-mz.122-25FX/c2960-lanbase-mz.122-25.FX.bin, 2928176 bytes, 5720
tape blocks
3. Verify that the bin file was extracted by using the ls -l <image_filename.bin> UNIX command.
switch% ls -l
image_filename.bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 boba 2928176 Apr 21 12:01
c2960-lanbase-mz.122-25.FX/c2960-lanbase-mz.122-25.FX.bin
Step3 Connect your PC with terminal-emulation software supporting the Xmodem Protocol to the switch
console port.
Step4 Set the line speed on the emulation software to 9600 baud.
Step5 Unplug the switch power cord.
Step6 Press the Mode button, and at the same time, reconnect the power cord to the switch.
You can release the Mode button a second or two after the LED above port 1 goes off. Several lines of
information about the software appear along with instructio ns:
The system has been interrupted prior to initializing the flash file system. The following
commands will initialize the flash file system, and finish loading the operating system
software#
flash_init
load_helper
boot
Step7 Initialize the flash file system:
switch: flash_init