Modding/upgrading Arista switches?

[Shailp]

yeah, nothing for normal users (except maybe some really niche physical security/boot security issues patched)

also here's a quick guide to properly format a new USB DOM so it appears like they do from factory. I originally just created a partition table on it, created sda1, then it would boot no problem, but kept getting weird "can't mount /dev/sda, /dev/sda1 already mounted" errors - so after looking through the aboot init scripts, it mounts the block device /dev/sda directly, no partitions, as vfat

So on a new USB DOM/internal USB storage:

#unplug front thumb drive
#power on
umount /mnt/flash
mkfs.vfat /dev/sda
reboot

#plug in front thumb drive
#copy the main image
cp /mnt/usb1/EOS-4.21.2F.swi /mnt/flash
#copy configs over from your thumb drive if they exist
cp /mnt/usb1/startup-config /mnt/flash
cp /mnt/usb1/zerotouch-config /mnt/flash
boot flash:EOS-4.21.2F.swi

#it will boot into EOS
#tell it to boot from internal flash automatically from now on
enable
config t
boot system flash:EOS-4.21.2F.swi
write

maybe obvious to most of you, not sure. Most embedded usb booting devices like this I've used in the past mounted a partition, so wasn't used to it wanting the raw black device

edit: neat, for aboot to boot the full SWI EOS image, it just kexecs the kernel from it, so coreboot does not get called again:
aboot > EOS boot stage 0
aboot >EOS boot stage 1

Hi weve sourced few Arista 7050QX32S . these all came without flash /DOM. so i just used a normal usb drive with male header on 9 pin dom port. the drive is detected . after that i followed these instruction to flash and copied eos, modified the boot-config to use flash: EOS image . the EOS is booted succesfully . but after that as soon as we reboot . it throughs the error . NO SWI IS SPECIFIED and the boot-config file becomes 0 byte.

i tired same instruction with diffrent pen drives.still after first reboot it doesnt boot.


Update:
1. I've figured out the issue.
If we use pendrive as a dom . Aboot don't like larger size pen drive. The size of pendrive should be less than 16GB . In my case I was trying with 32,64,128gb and it was throwing random errors. It's little difficult to have 4/8/16gb laying around.
When I used 16gb it's booted fine and working as expected.

2.also if we don't want to use usb dom at all. Just plug any pen drive in front usb port with fat32 & eos image. The aboot will mount front usb as flash and booted just fine.alao in front usb case size of pen drive doens't matter.