[j-nsp] JunOS 8.0 upgrade for SSG520/550M

[Peter E. Fry]

On 9 Mar 2007 at 17:47, Emil Katzarski wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> SSG520M and SSG550M are exactly the same hardware as the J series
> routers. Their price is also equal. So you can choose if you need a
> router or a security device and use the apropriate software. You can
> benefit from keeping only one device in your spare stock and backup
> both SSG and J series. It's just made for flexibility

  It seems I unfairly characterized the SSG550 (Saipan) as using the
i915 chipset.  I decided to look again, as I'm looking into a giant
RAM swap.  Turns out it uses the E7221 variation of the i925, so it
potentially supports ECC memory.
  I also tried some of the memory I have lying about...  JunOS 
8.1r1.5 will not boot on this (non-M) chassis -- it stops right 
before the "DEVFS: ready to run" message (and up to that point seems
fine), but its behavior is the same with 2GB or 3GB.  ScreenOS
(5.4.0r3) seems to have an administrative limit of 2GB.
  It'd take way too much effort to flash up a copy of Memtest86, plug
in a USB keyboard, and figure out the video header so I can see 
what's
happening.  (Hmm -- I suppose I could try the SATA header... but I
still wouldn't be able to see anything, and I stole the SATA power
lead in any case.)  Does anybody here happen to know if the Saipan
motherboard supports ECC, or know of an easy way to tell?  The only
indicator I have to go on at the moment is a typical behavior of the
AMI BIOS with Intel chipsets: a pause before the BIOS banner
proportional to memory size to initialize ECC RAM.  Prior experience
with various motherboards tells me that the BIOS does not do this 
when
non-ECC RAM is installed, or when the BIOS ECC support is not 
enabled.
 Hardly conclusive, but interesting.
  I'm rather surprised JunOS doesn't boot.  Hmph.  I don't have the
equipment handy to whip up another "install medium", but I can't
imagine there's enough J2300-specific config on my existing CF to 
halt
it cold.  Too bad -- it'd be interesting to try it at 3GB.
  (For those who haven't bothered to hunt it down: 
http://www.juniper.net/solutions/literature/feature/210009.pdf)
  Oh well -- back to ScreenOS, but now at 2GB with ECC that might
actually work, not that I'm running out of RAM at the moment.  I have
to quit taking this poor thing apart -- I'm going to wear it out.

Peter E. Fry