Some time ago I had a case with damaged file system on Huawei S5300 switch. It had been caused by power failure on one site. The switch was not able to decompress VRP software and rebooted itself all the time.
BIOS LOADING ... Copyright (c) 2008-2010 HUAWEI TECH CO., LTD. (Ver107, Jan 18 2011, 22:52:53) Press Ctrl+B to enter BOOTROM menu... 1 Auto-booting... Update Epld file ............................ None Decompressing VRP software .................. BIOS LOADING ... Copyright (c) 2008-2010 HUAWEI TECH CO., LTD. (Ver107, Jan 18 2011, 22:52:53) Press Ctrl+B to enter BOOTROM menu... 1 Auto-booting... Update Epld file ............................ None Decompressing VRP software ..................
To reactivate this switch we decided to upload a new software file to the flash of the switch. It was not enough space to do it, so format flash was necessary.
Press Ctrl+B to enter BOOTROM menu... password: BOOTROM MENU 1. Boot with default mode 2. Enter serial submenu 3. Enter startup submenu 4. Enter ethernet submenu 5. Enter filesystem submenu 6. Modify BOOTROM password 7. Reboot Enter your choice(1-7): 5 FILESYSTEM SUBMENU 1. Erase Flash 2. Format flash 3. Delete file from Flash 4. Rename file from Flash 5. Display Flash files 6. Update EPLD file 7. Update FansCard File 8. Return to main menu Enter your choice(1-8): 5 No. File Size(bytes) Created Date File Name ================================================================= 6: 14139156 bytes Apr 26 2013 00:20:11 s5300ei-v200r001c00spc300.cc 7: 384384 bytes Oct 01 2008 00:12:05 bootrom009.bin 8: 15355 bytes Oct 28 2013 12:36:13 vrpcfg.cfg 11: 11113860 bytes Apr 24 2013 14:37:10 s5300ei-v100r005c01spc100.cc 12: 58044 bytes Apr 26 2013 00:13:51 s5300ei-v200r001sph006.pat Total: 30008KB(Free: 4240KB) FILESYSTEM SUBMENU 1. Erase Flash 2. Format flash 3. Delete file from Flash 4. Rename file from Flash 5. Display Flash files 6. Update EPLD file 7. Update FansCard File 8. Return to main menu Enter your choice(1-8): 2 Note: Format flash will damage Flash file system. Format flash? Yes or No(Y/N): y Formatting Flash, please waiting several minutes ............................................................................................................................................................. done
Let’s look at free space on the flash memory:
FILESYSTEM SUBMENU 1. Erase Flash 2. Format flash 3. Delete file from Flash 4. Rename file from Flash 5. Display Flash files 6. Update EPLD file 7. Update FansCard File 8. Return to main menu Enter your choice(1-8): 5 No. File Size(bytes) Created Date File Name ================================================================= Total: 30008KB(Free: 30000KB)
The memory has been freed.
Glad we started loading the new VRP file to the flash by FTP. How to upload a new file to S5300 you can see on the article: “console password recovery Huawei S5300“.
And we encountered the second problem. We were not able to upload this file due to lack of free space of the flash memory, even though it has been formatted. To solve this problem we decided to update bootrom. Below a whole procedure how to do this:
BOOTROM MENU 1. Boot with default mode 2. Enter serial submenu 3. Enter startup submenu 4. Enter ethernet submenu 5. Enter filesystem submenu 6. Modify BOOTROM password 7. Reboot Enter your choice(1-7): 4 ETHERNET SUBMENU 1. Download file to SDRAM through ethernet interface and reboot the system 2. Download file to Flash through ethernet interface 3. Modify ethernet interface boot parameter 4. Return to main menu Be sure to select 3 to modify boot parameter before downloading! Enter your choice(1-4): 3 BOOTLINE SUBMENU 1. Set TFTP protocol parameters 2. Set FTP protocol parameters 3. Return to ethernet menu Enter your choice(1-3): 2 '.' = clear field; '-' = go to previous field; ^D = quit Load File name : SV100R002C02B152_for_5300.cc S5300EI-bootrom.bin Switch IP address : 192.168.130.53 Server IP address : 192.168.130.137 FTP User Name : a huawei FTP User Password : a huawei Starting to write BOOTLINE into flash ... done BOOTLINE SUBMENU 1. Set TFTP protocol parameters 2. Set FTP protocol parameters 3. Return to ethernet menu Enter your choice(1-3): 3 ETHERNET SUBMENU 1. Download file to SDRAM through ethernet interface and reboot the system 2. Download file to Flash through ethernet interface 3. Modify ethernet interface boot parameter 4. Return to main menu Be sure to select 3 to modify boot parameter before downloading! Enter your choice(1-4): 1 boot device : mottsec unit number : 0 processor number : 0 host name : host file name : S5300EI-bootrom.bin inet on ethernet (e) : 192.168.130.53 host inet (h) : 192.168.130.137 user (u) : huawei ftp password (pw) : huawei flags (f) : 0x0 Attached TCP/IP interface to mottsec0. Warning: no netmask specified. Attaching network interface lo0... done. Loading... Read file to sdram .Done Warning: Don't Power-off or Reset the Device!!! Update bootrom system ... done ! ETHERNET SUBMENU 1. Download file to SDRAM through ethernet interface and reboot the system 2. Download file to Flash through ethernet interface 3. Modify ethernet interface boot parameter 4. Return to main menu Enter your choice(1-4): 4 BOOTROM MENU 1. Boot with default mode 2. Enter serial submenu 3. Enter startup submenu 4. Enter ethernet submenu 5. Enter filesystem submenu 6. Modify BOOTROM password 7. Reboot Enter your choice(1-7): 7 Reboot...
The bootrom has been updated.
After update you can see that the command for updating bootrom has also been changed. It looks more intuitively now:
BOOTROM MENU 1. Boot with default mode 2. Enter serial submenu 3. Enter startup submenu 4. Enter ethernet submenu 5. Enter filesystem submenu 6. Modify BOOTROM password 7. Clear password for console user 8. Reboot Enter your choice(1-8): 4 ETHERNET SUBMENU 1. Update BOOTROM system 2. Download file to Flash through ethernet interface 3. Upload Configuration file to Ftp through ethernet interface 4. Modify ethernet interface boot parameter 5. Return to main menu Be sure to select 4 to modify boot parameter before downloading! Enter your choice(1-5):
After bootrom update there was not any problem to upload the new VRP software file to the switche’s flash memory.