TravelingPacket – A blog of network musings

recently I had an issue where the firmware on a 9200 switch was corrupted. This can help during an upgrade, or removal, etc.

After a reboot the switch came up to rom monitor mode, no biggie I thought- just copy the firmware from USB over to flash and install. This did not work, I continued to get error: “Unsupported destination device/filesystem.” see below-

switch: copy usbflash0:cat9k_lite_iosxe.17.03.04b.SPA.bin flash
Unsupported destination device/filesystem.

I then booted from the USB image and installed the system that way. My steps were:

• Frist check the file on USB and make sure its there/get the name.

switch: dir usbflash0:

Attributes Size Name

---

D-HS- 0 System Volume Information
—-A 482856473 cat9k_lite_iosxe.17.03.04b.SPA.bin

Then set my switch to boot to this value :

switch: boot usbflash0:cat9k_lite_iosxe.17.03.04b.SPA.bin

This fully loaded up the switch, and came up at a default setup screen. Once there I copied over the file VIA TFTP to flash. The device would not recognize the USB drive now (Probably cause I booted from it). Once copied to flash, I just installed normally, and rebooted.

Switch# install add file flash:/cat9k_lite_iosxe.17.03.04b.SPA.bin activate commit
install_add_activate_commit: START Thu Feb 10 16:59:35 UTC 2022
Feb 10 16:59:36.334: %INSTALL-5-INSTALL_START_INFO: R0/0: install_engine: Started install one-shot flash:/cat9k_lite_iosxe.17.03.04b.SPA.bin
Feb 10 16:59:36.334 %INSTALL-5-INSTALL_START_INFO: R0/0: install_engine: Started install one-shot flash:/cat9k_lite_iosxe.17.03.04b.SPA.bin

*Feb 10 16:59:36.297: %INSTALL-5-INSTALL_START_INFO: Switch 1 R0/0: install_engine: Started install one-shot flash:/cat9k_lite_iosxe.17.03.04b.SPA.bininstall_add_activate_commit: Adding PACKAGE
install_add_activate_commit: Checking whether new add is allowed ….

This operation requires a reload of the system. Do you want to proceed?
Please confirm you have changed boot config to flash:packages.conf [y/n]y

IMPORTANT!!!

Next you have to change the boot config – or else it will go back to rom monitor.

config t

boot system flash:packages.conf

exit

wr mem

That’s it!