Having Issues With Brocade Switch - Not Booting

[b3ararms]

Hi everyone. This is my first post here. Hopefully this is the right place for my thread. If not please point me in the right direction.
Anyway, I bought a Brocade ICX 6430-C12 on ebay last week. I just got it today, hooked up my console cable, powered up the switch, and it is not booting into fastiron. This is what I'm seeing: brocade icx - Pastebin.com
I downloaded the firmware from brocade's website and tried getting it on the switch with tftp but when I enter flinfo again the output is the same. I tried bootp as well, it looks like it downloads the firmware, but when I save the environment variables and reboots it drops me right back in to where I was.
I'm not sure if this is fixable or if I need to contact the seller on ebay and get my money back. The listing said it was pulled from a working environment and was guaranteed functional. If anyone has any suggestions I'd greatly appreciate it.

 

[fohdeesha]

Well that's interesting! The 6430 is a very cut down minimal version of the ICX line and I'm not super familiar with it (never used one, or any of the ARM architecture fastIrons to be honest) - but it seems like it has come with a very old generic marvell u-boot bootloader, and it doesn't surprise me that it won't boot the latest fastiron images.

For a bootloader it should be running a much later brocade customized u-boot/linx boootloader, kxz10105.bin to be exact (should be in the firmware zip you downloaded).

So you just need to flash that bootloader (carefully), then re-flash the latest firmware again from that new bootloader (it probably writes it to a different location etc) then it should boot. The question is how to flash it. If there's no dedicated bootloader flashing commands in that old u-boot you have, it can be done with raw copy commands (similar to what we had to come up with for the quanta>brocade flash). Let me know if you need to jump on google hangouts or discord or something and I can walk you through it

did you attempt to boot it without interfering with it after you received it, or did you immediately try to upgrade it? Reason I ask is because if they had a very old fastiron version on there designed to work with that old bootloader, it probably did work fine for them, and only has trouble now after you updated the firmware image but not the bootloader

also, what happens when you don't press a key to interrupt autoboot? does it still just drop you into the bootloader prompt?

 

[b3ararms]

Well that's interesting! The 6430 is a very cut down minimal version of the ICX line and I'm not super familiar with it (never used one, or any of the ARM architecture fastIrons to be honest) - but it seems like it has come with a very old generic marvell u-boot bootloader, and it doesn't surprise me that it won't boot the latest fastiron images.

For a bootloader it should be running a much later brocade customized u-boot/linx boootloader, kxz10105.bin to be exact (should be in the firmware zip you downloaded).

So you just need to flash that bootloader (carefully), then re-flash the latest firmware again from that new bootloader (it probably writes it to a different location etc) then it should boot. The question is how to flash it. If there's no dedicated bootloader flashing commands in that old u-boot you have, it can be done with raw copy commands (similar to what we had to come up with for the quanta>brocade flash). Let me know if you need to jump on google hangouts or discord or something and I can walk you through it

did you attempt to boot it without interfering with it after you received it, or did you immediately try to upgrade it? Reason I ask is because if they had a very old fastiron version on there designed to work with that old bootloader, it probably did work fine for them, and only has trouble now after you updated the firmware image but not the bootloader

Hey thanks for your response! I booted it without interfering at all. Just plugged in the power cable and watched the output in putty. The pastebin link I posted is the output from first plugging it in. That'd be awesome if you could walk me through it on discord. I just opened an account, same name as on here: b3ararms.

As for not interrupting autoboot, it still drops me in the same prompt.

 

[fohdeesha]

I'll need the four digit code after it too, the full nick like "b3ararms#3242" then check your friend requests after posting it

 

[b3ararms]

I'll need the four digit code after it too, the full nick like "b3ararms#3242" then check your friend requests after posting it

Oops, I missed that part: b3ararms#2511

 

[fohdeesha]

After an hour or two of poking around the mysterious ancient OEM uboot we got it figured out and up and running!

If anyone else out there happens to get an ICX64xx with an OEM bootloader from nowhere, this is what you need to do to get it running brocade again. be careful!

#copy and paste these commands only, do not try to type them
#this will replace the bootloader!
#do not do this unless you have an icx6430 or 6450
#give it a temporary IP:
setenv ipaddr 192.168.1.50
#set the IP of your tftp server hosting these files:
setenv serverip 192.168.1.49
tftp 3000000 kxz10105.bin
#make sure the bootloader was copied to ram correctly:
md 3000000 20
#the first line in the output should say LINX
#now copy it from ram to boot sector
prot off f8000000 f80fffff
erase f8000000 f80bFFFF
sflash write 3000200 0 0xC0000
reset

#it'll reboot into the actual brocade bootloader
#in the new bootloader:
#set temp IP again:
setenv ipaddr 192.168.1.50
#set tftp IP again:
setenv serverip 192.168.1.49
tell it the name of the OS image on your tftp server:
setenv image_name ICX64S08030r.bin
saveenv
update_primary
#it'll take some time flashing the OS
#when done:
reset
#it'll boot into the full OS and take a while
#the PoE controller FW will also be empty, needs flashing:
enable
conf t
ip address 192.168.1.8/24
exit
inline power install-firmware stack-unit 1 tftp 192.168.1.184 icx64xxc12_poeplus_02.03.09.fw

#enjoy your probably stolen from the factory floor (before programming) switch!

 

[b3ararms]

Man, HUGE thanks to @fohdeesha for helping me out! He seriously went out of his way to help me get this switch up and running. I definitely could not have done it without him. Very much appreciated!

 

[rorykingms]

Just a quick thank you to @fohdeesha for these instructions. I was able to get three ICX6450-C12's with the OEM bootloader up and running.

One note: I did have to use the out of band management port for the initial connection to the TFTP server.

Thanks for sharing the knowledge!