[c-nsp] Resetting (or not) a 6500/sup720 from the console/rommon

[Phil Mayers]

This morning we had a crash on a remote site router, a single-sup720 
6504 running 12.2(33)SXI (I know, it needs upgrading).

I got in over our out-of-band network and found the sup sitting at 
rommon, so typed reset, and it said:

System Bootstrap, Version 12.2(17r)S4, RELEASE SOFTWARE (fc1)
Technical Support: http://www.cisco.com/techsupport
Copyright (c) 2005 by cisco Systems, Inc.
Cat6k-Sup720/RP platform with 524288 Kbytes of main memory

...and then hung. I sent a break, typed reset, and it did it again... 
and again... and again...

Normally I'd remote power-cycle it, but at this particular location we 
don't have an inline switch, so I eventually had to ask a colleague who 
was on-site to do it.

Looking at the above, it seems like the sup was stuck with the RP in 
ownership of the console, and the SP somewhere (dead?). When I finally 
booted via a power-cycle I saw the familiar:

System Bootstrap, Version 8.4(2) Release
Copyright (c) 1994-2005 by cisco Systems, Inc.
Cat6k-Sup720/SP processor with 524288 Kbytes of main memory

...and from there the SP booted, and then chain-loaded the RP and all 
was well.

So - I conclude from this that you basically ALWAYS need remote power 
cycling equipment on a 6500/sup720, as the split RP/SP processor setup 
means you might get stuck and unable to boot.

Is this the case? Is there a command I could have typed at RP rommon to 
make it cold-boot? The commands present seemed to be a sub-set of the 
normal rommon commands, and told me weird things like:

rommon 3 > dir

This operation is not permitted after send-break.

...and:

rommon 5 > set

Access of environmental variables not permitted.
Please set confreg to 0 and reset if you want to make any changes.