[c-nsp] SXF4 (modular)

[Martin Winter]

On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, Bas wrote:
> On 3/28/06, Gert Doering <gert at greenie.muc.de> wrote:
>
>> Yes, I see it as such as well - just the promise of being able to kick
>> the BGP daemon after it has eaten up all memory without having to reboot
>> the whole router is just great!
>>
>> Not even mentioning security updates without reboots.
>
> But not being allowed to remove/replace diskX on a "live" router is
> something getting used to...

It's not like the router would crash if you remove it. But it actually 
allows to save some DRAM as we don't need to keep everything in memory at 
all the time and have access to the disk in case of a reload of a 
linecard. (ie when we need to download a image to the linecard)

However, you have 2 choices with the modular IOS:

   1) don't install it and just copy it to the flash card like you would
      do with a classic IOS - which means it keeps everything in RAM and
      has the same dependency on the flash card like a previous IOS image.
      No patching possible, but you could remove the flash card as
      long as you don't reload the router. I still recommend to keep the
      flashcard with the IOS in the router at all times.

   2) install it with the "install" command. More dependency on the
      flash card, but it will free up some memory, but now you have
      all the patching features.

- Martin