Author: Cody

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Firmware upgrade Cisco 7911g via tftpd

I’ve been working on bringing some old cisco 7911G’s up to a recent sip firmware so they can be used with asterisk. Luckily the firmware is all available on the cisco site as long as you sign up for a free account.

If you’re running firmware older than 8.3 you need to update to a firmware level between 8.3 and 8.5.2 before you upgrade to firmware 9.x.

From the firmware 9.2 release notes:

"For all SCCP firmware upgrades from firmware release versions earlier than 8.3(3) to Version 9.2(3) or
  later, you must first upgrade your firmware to an intermediate Version (8.3(3) to 8.5(2)) and then
  upgrade to 9.2(3)."

To do the upgrade you need the a tftp server and option 66 defined on your dhcp to tell the phones where to look for the files. I’m doing this with a CentOS 6 server.

To force the upgrade I had to do the following:

Power off the phone.
Hold down the # key.
While holding #, connect an AC adaptor to the phone.
Continue to hold # until the line buttons blink amber.
Release the # key.
Enter 3491672850*#

Once you do that the phone is wiped and it reboots in search of new firmware. After obtaining an ip from DHCP (with option 66 pointing it to the tftp server) it will connect to the tftp server and start fetching firmware.

I had a problem where it was fetching the first few files but then generating a nak error on the tftpd server:

Apr 13 10:25:10 pbx in.tftpd[2732]: RRQ from 10.10.10.10 filename term11.default.loads
Apr 13 10:25:10 pbx in.tftpd[2733]: RRQ from 10.10.10.10 filename Jar11sip.8-2-2ES4.sbn
Apr 13 10:25:10 pbx in.tftpd[2733]: sending NAK (1, File not found) to 10.10.10.10
Apr 13 10:25:10 pbx in.tftpd[2734]: RRQ from 10.10.10.10 filename cnu11.8-2-2ES4.sbn
Apr 13 10:25:11 pbx in.tftpd[2734]: tftpd: read(ack): Connection refused

So it requests the first file but then dies on the Jar11sip.8-2-2ES4.sbn. Strange! After looking in the tftp folder I noticed that the file was there as expected. After some head scratching I ran strings against term11.default.loads which tells the phone what firmware files to download.

# strings term11.default.loads
# This file contains a list of archive image files that will be requested by the
# RELEASE load version 8-2-2ES4
#HARDWARE_COMP_1 1
Jar11sip.8-2-2ES4.sbn
cnu11.8-2-2ES4.sbn
apps11.8-2-2ES4.sbn
dsp11.8-2-2ES4.sbn
cvm11sip.8-2-2ES4.sbn
# ls
apps11.8-2-2ES4.sbn
cvm11sip.8-2-2ES4.sbn
jar11sip.8-2-2ES4.sbn
term06.default.loads
cnu11.8-2-2ES4.sbn
dsp11.8-2-2ES4.sbn
SIP11.8-2-2SR3S.loads
term11.default.loads

Ah! Linux is case sensitive so trying to download Jar11sip.8-2-2ES4.sbn isn’t going to work if the file on the server is jar11sip.8-2-2ES4.sbn. A quick rename of the file to Jar11sip.8-2-2ES4.sbn fixed the issue and the phone did it’s firmware update correctly. That seems like a bit of an oversight by the firmware release team at Cisco but maybe their Call Manager software runs a case insensitive tftpd.

 

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Keeping notes

I’ve been an on again off again note keeper since my teens. It seems I start keeping notes and then I lose my notebook or forget it at home and just end up using sticky notes or note pads which fall apart and end up in the trash.

For the new year I’m going to attempt to re-kindle my note-taking efforts in an attempt to make my life better organized. I’m hoping this will help me achieve some of the goals I have set out for myself, both personally and professionally.

Right now I’m trying to decide between different notebooks and what the ideal size might be. For simple note taking a small pocket notebook would be ideal but I find they cause me hand cramps if I do any real volume of writing. The flip side is that if I go too big I’m apt to leave it on my desk at home.

I’m going to go out at lunch tomorrow to see what I can find, I’ll do a followup post if I find something I like.

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FreeBSD10-Stable Boot Failure with ZFS root

So I recently upgraded my 10-Stable machine at home to get some of the latest fix-ups. I forgot to update the boot code but I figured it would be a big deal since I was going from 10-stable to 10-stable. After rebooting I was greeted with “ZFS: unsupported feature: com.delphix:hole_birth” followed by no bootable zpools found. Ugh.

Downloaded the latest stable memstick image and booted off it to update the boot code.

gpart bootcode -b /boot/pmbr -p /boot/gptzfsboot -i 1 ada0

Moral of the story? If you don’t update the boot code on a zfs root machine during an upgrade you’re going to have a bad time.