[c-nsp] FYI: Head's up on Sup720 SP bootrom (rommon) issues

[Charles Spurgeon]

FYI. This is a "heads up" on some image loading issues we ran into on
our Sup720s.

We had a Sup720 running Native IOS that failed to reload and ended up
at the "rommon>" prompt due to a read failure on a disk0 image file
combined with a failure of the SP rommon code to load the backup image
that had been configured to boot from sup-bootflash.

In other words, if you have multiple images configured to load in case
someone walks away with the disk0 flash or in case the flash has a
read error, and if you have old SP rommon code, then you may find that
the SP rommon fails just when you need it most.

The particular failure we had was with 8.1(3) SP rommon code. Tests on
a lab router with 7.7(1) code showed that it was worse than 8.1(3).

The bottom line is that we are now loading v8.4(2) rommon code into
all of our Sup720 SPs, since our lab tests show that it appears to
function correctly when the flash card is missing or the image file
doesn't read correctly.

Thanks,

-Charles

Charles E. Spurgeon / UTnet
UT Austin ITS / Networking
c.spurgeon at its.utexas.edu / 512.475.9265

===========================================================================
Info on upgrading the rommon can be found in the Sup720 rommon release notes:
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/lan/cat6000/relnotes/ol_5631.htm

CatIOS command to see what SP rommon version you are running:
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
lab-sup720BXL#remote command switch sho ver
Cisco Internetwork Operating System Software 
(blah, blah)

ROM: System Bootstrap, Version 8.4(2) Release
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++