Juniper EX4300 w/o Firmware :-(

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4920441

New Member
Oct 10, 2019
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Hi,
I just got a EX4300 PoE+ Switch, but it does not boot because it is missing its firmware...
Since it is an ebay-buy, I cannot contact Juniper about it.

The other thing in Question, if someone would provide me an image file were I can get the bootoader boot from, is there the base license still "built into the system" or do I have even then only a large, loud and windy paperweight because I have no way to get the "base license" installed?

Don't get me wrong, I never had a Juniper switch until now, so I don't know how the licensing is handled.... I did do some Juniper Firewalls (SRX) back in the days, but currently I am only used to Cisco, Palo Alto and Mikrotik Stuff the last couple of years.
But since Juniper seems to have a very capable bootloader, booting/restoring via tftp/usb shouldn't be an issue as such, I think.

Thanks a lot for your help!

Cheers

4920441
 
A

alsenior

Member Member
Apr 19, 2016
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Are you getting the U boot output from the console when you boot? if not the your SOL and you have a paper weight
 
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4920441

New Member
Oct 10, 2019
14
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Hi,

yes U-Boot was complaining in the serial console - I don't have access to the device right now.

Do you have a link to a 'recent' howto howto go on further flashing from USB/tftp/whatever?

The question which bothers me most, is about the base license. Is it a file you have to upload lastly in the step of recovering?

Cheers
 
4

4920441

New Member
Oct 10, 2019
14
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also there is no Base licence on the EX and all the licencing is optional so you can use all the features with a nag message
Click to expand...
Thats good to know. I thought you have to download the base license from Juniper, which is difficult to impossible to a refurbished device, I think.

Thank you very much for that Information.

Cheers
4920441
 
4

4920441

New Member
Oct 10, 2019
14
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BTW: which Junos is the recommended one for a EX4300? I don't wanna do too fancy stuff, Use all Ports, a dozen of vlans, igmp snooping / querier for IPTV, PoE, that's all - I saw somewhere that 2.5 GBit in the 10 GBit Extension is working as well - that would be pretty cool as well.

Thanks a lot!

Cheers

4920441
 
I

itisrich

New Member
Jun 20, 2024
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Hi,
I don't know you have resolved your issues, but I thought I should mention that I also bought a "no-firmware" EX4300 from eBay, and after having no success installing an OS, I removed the cover and found that the words "missing firmware" meant that the actual flash chip had been removed, and thus any hope of installing new firmware...

I already had a working EX4300, so I opened it up to see exactly what was missing, and discovered that the missing firmware board is little more than a USB flash drive with a different connector. I don't know what your level of technical proficiency might be, so I'll try not to be too confusing, but the general idea is to add your own replacement.

On the rear end of the main circuit board, near the console and management connectors, there is a small header with 4 pins on one side, 5 on the other.

Code: 
                _________
      Red (+5V) | o | x | 
          White | o | x |
          Green | o | x |
    Black (gnd) | o | x |
     unused pin | o |   |  < no pin
                ---------
You can either solder up an adapter, or find an old PC that has a front mounted USB ports (non-USB3 or USBC). As luck would have it, several of the OEM front-mounted USB ports with small headers to connect to their respective motherboards that I have saved from old computers over the years had a matching pinout, and worked without modification.

The most important part of the operation is to use a USB flash drive that is less than 8G in total size. Juniper's incarnation of the FreeBSD kernel doesn't seem to bother with LBA, so it gets upset with disks (flash or otherwise) that have more that 8G of space.
That means the ENTIRE DISK can't exceed 8G...Using a larger drive in the hopes that Juniper will just ignore the excess doesn't work.

Good luck.
 
O

OnnoO

New Member
Oct 12, 2023
15
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This probably is just a regular eUSB header. You can buy eUSB memory online.
The advantage of eUSB is that these devices in general have proper wear leveling. Makes them much more expensive unfortunately.
 
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