There is. If it detects an error during the upgrade it aborts. But 'data'
is not considered an error, and the PM doesn't know if data in the FLASH is
supposed to be there or not, it could be spurious bits set in a data
structure. Everything I've seen so far has been either spurious data (the
odd local IPs, the S0 port acting weird) or a HW problem on the FLASH. The
former is recoverable with a wipe and reconfigure, the later is an RMA.
Since it needs to read the old data to rearrange it, it couldn't just
erase the FLASH and start with a clean slate. The data in RAM isn't the
complete settings, it is just the active settings. The problems seem to
stem from spurious data in the FLASH that wasn't effecting the old release
that suddenly finds itself in the middle of an area of FLASH being used
by the new release. This seems more prevelant with upgrades from pre-3.3.1
to the new stuff, as some changes happned at the 3.3.1 level too. The
reason we've been thinking there is also some relation to number of upgrades
is just accumulated cruft. The more times the FLASH has been rearranged the
better the odds of something being left in the wrong place to bite later.
Overall it is still rare.
There have been a few sites where a number of units errored in the same way.
And I know some of them used pmreadconf to read one unit and write the image
to the others to make installing easy. It is possible they were copying
an error in the process along with the config.
>any. Is it viewed as "code bloat?" To go from a functional site, to an
>RMA'ed machine because of an attempted software upgrade seems a little
If the unit is in the middle of rearranging the FLASH and it finds an
HW failure, it is too late. There is no way to recover from a HW failure
like that. It will find it when it is trying to write to the FLASH, at
which time it has already wiped out the old image, so if it found an
error it wouldn't be able to save the old image.
If it finds an error during an upgrade the upgrade will abort. The unit
should still be running with the image in RAM. You can go in and wipe the
FLASH clean by hand and then try again. That nearly always works. If it
is an actual HW FLASH failure, there is no way around it. You might try
clearing the FLASH and loading the old release it was running with, that
may or may not work.
-MZ
-- Livingston Enterprises - Chair, Department of Interstitial Affairs Phone: 800-458-9966 510-426-0770 FAX: 510-426-8951 megazone@livingston.com For support requests: support@livingston.com <http://www.livingston.com/> Snail mail: 6920 Koll Center Parkway #220, Pleasanton, CA 94566 See me in person: Internet Expo, Boston, MA, October 16-17, Booth 422 ;-)