Modding/upgrading Arista switches?

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Manbeard

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Apr 15, 2020
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Indianapolis, IN
Did you purchase your switch from someone on the board?
No, unfortunately, I ended up on eBay as I've been in a bit of a hurry. I've been trying to knock out a project to expand my storage server by adding a disk shelf (DS4246) and upgrading my network to 10Gbps to better support transferring large amounts of data and eventually VM storage. I've been a STH lurker for a few years but only just signed up for the forum. I use to work for an R&E NOC and had contacts for Juniper to update my EX2200 as much as I could, but this is my first venture into Arista and don't have the network (pun intended) of contacts that I do for Juniper, Brocade, Cisco, and Ciena.
 
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Biberlu

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May 17, 2020
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Hi all, I'm new here, being following this thread for some time. My 7050T-64 arrived several days ago. I tear up the switch and decided to upgrade memory first. I picked up a pair of 8GB 1.35V DDR3 and works! Here is the memory stick I use: Two of Kingston KVR16LN11/8.

Next step is storage. Besides the USB Dom, there are one SATA and one PCI-E x1 connectors on my switch board. Does anyone know the speed of SATA and PCI-E generation on this board? And for those who has upgrade to SATA SSD, how do you make a fixed position? (No M.2 connector on my board.)
 

fohdeesha

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Nov 20, 2016
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Hi all, I'm new here, being following this thread for some time. My 7050T-64 arrived several days ago. I tear up the switch and decided to upgrade memory first. I picked up a pair of 8GB 1.35V DDR3 and works! Here is the memory stick I use: Two of Kingston KVR16LN11/8.

Next step is storage. Besides the USB Dom, there are one SATA and one PCI-E x1 connectors on my switch board. Does anyone know the speed of SATA and PCI-E generation on this board? And for those who has upgrade to SATA SSD, how do you make a fixed position? (No M.2 connector on my board.)
the PCIe slot is not PCIe, it's a proprietary debug port that arista just happened to use a PCIe 1x connector for. Was trying to get doom running on one of these switches and was disappointed to find this out
 
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Biberlu

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May 17, 2020
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the PCIe slot is not PCIe, it's a proprietary debug port that arista just happened to use a PCIe 1x connector for. Was trying to get doom running on one of these switches and was disappointed to find this out
Got it! Thank you so much for saving my time to investigate.
 

dracocephalum

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Sep 20, 2019
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I am now playing with my Arista DCS-7060CX-32S-R - a side note is, even the m.2 has a key for NVME, if you put an NVME m.2 SSD in it, it will not be recognized by the system. I guess it will only accept an SATA m.2 SSD with dual keys....Wish me luck, I am waiting for my SATA m.2 to arrive...

But the good thing is, I have successfully upgraded it from 8GB RAM to 16GB (use both slots). VMs / Containers seem promising ;)
 

shtvr

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Aug 26, 2020
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Hi all,

I'm using a statically linked version of dropbear in Aboot to be able to ssh into the switch through the management port. When I ssh as root into it (ssh root@switch.ma1.ip.addr), it keeps asking me for a password even though I haven't assigned any (using the boot secret cmd in EOS).

I thought using the default empty pwd would allow me to ssh but that is not the case, I still need to create the .ssh/authorized keys and authenticate using it (I wanted to avoid that).

Any clue what the default pwd for ssh might be? @fohdeesha you mentioned there is Aboot source code available somewhere, can you point me to it?

Thanks in advance!
 

fohdeesha

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If I understand you correctly you're trying to SSH into aboot, NOT eos? It's been a while since I played with these, but I do remember aboot just being a very slim nix install. Did you build dropbear for it and stick it in aboot? (Just out of curiosity, props to anyone making these things do things they're not supposed to). Does your dropbear config allow root logins (with password, not set to key only)

Regarding source, grab the tar here: Open-Source Software

In that tar, you're looking for "AbootGpl-1.0.10-17172302.42411F.src.rpm" - the filename/version might be different depending on which source tar you grab
 

fohdeesha

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extracting abootgpl out and searching it's contents recursively (including inside archives, I use dngrep on windows) for both "passwd" and "password" has some interesting hits - including inside the dropbear source, so I guess dropbear already comes in aboot?
 

dracocephalum

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Sep 20, 2019
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Okay, finally got some time to play with my DCS-7060CX-32S-R further. Here are the findings so far:

1. There is no SATA / SATA DOM header on the motherboard. However there is /mnt/flash. So I guess it must be some kind of soldered on ROM chips that won't be replaceable easily if they are worn out.

2. So the only way to get extra storage is via the M.2 (SATA) - the device will appear as /dev/sda. However, looks like ABoot is expecting the filesystem on /dev/sda to be FAT. And, EOS is expecting /dev/sda to be ext4. Therefore, I cannot pre-extract the .swi to /dev/sda since it needs ext4 I believe and ABoot won't see the files if it is ext4. However, I can place the .swi to /dev/sda so it boots off it quite a bit faster. EOS can still see files on /dev/sda even if it is fat (and complains about that tho).

FYI the memory I am using are 2x Micron 8GB 2RX8 PC3-14900E (UDIMM ECC).

I have decided to go a bit adventurous so instead of using M.2 SATA drives, I have purchased an adapter (a Sintech ST-NGFF1ST) so I can use an old Intel X25-E SLC SSD lying around. I need to be a bit creative about how to secure it in the chassis :)
 

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fohdeesha

Kaini Industries
Nov 20, 2016
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here are my notes on formatting and installing to M2, aboot didn't have an issue seeing it after formatting it ext4 within eos:

Code:
## FORMAT M2
enable
bash
sudo umount /mnt/drive
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda
exit
reload (save and confirm changes)
##/mnt/drive will now exist in aboot and EOS


##(below installs EOS to M2, which breaks some commands)
#not recommended
enable
bash
image-install -d /mnt/drive /mnt/usb1/EOS-4.21.2F.swi
reboot
if I remember right the "image-install" script changes some environment variables and boot options in aboot, that might be what you were missing
 
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dracocephalum

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Sep 20, 2019
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here are my notes on formatting and installing to M2, aboot didn't have an issue seeing it after formatting it ext4 within eos:

Code:
## FORMAT M2
enable
bash
sudo umount /mnt/drive
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda
exit
reload (save and confirm changes)
##/mnt/drive will now exist in aboot and EOS


##(below installs EOS to M2, which breaks some commands)
#not recommended
enable
bash
image-install -d /mnt/drive /mnt/usb1/EOS-4.21.2F.swi
reboot
if I remember right the "image-install" script changes some environment variables and boot options in aboot, that might be what you were missing
Thanks will give a try again later. Does the aboot version matter?
 

fohdeesha

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Thanks will give a try again later. Does the aboot version matter?
it shouldn't, just be aware at least the last time we all tried this a few pages back with 4.21.x (installed EOS to a faster drive), a lot of random commands no longer worked, it seemed a lot of the python scripts behind the commands had absolute instead of relative paths to the old USB DOM location and not /mnt/drive. Could be better now as of 4.24.x, no clue
 
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dracocephalum

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Sep 20, 2019
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Thanks fohdeesha, got it working properly on EXT4 now - I just placed the .swi there without decompressing it, but booting off of /mnt/drive is still a lot faster than the flash. With the EOS64 4.23.1F I am getting following "errors" during boot but hopefully they are not going to impact normal usage anyways...

Data in /mnt/drive/EOS64-4.23.1F.swi differs from previous boot image on /mnt/drive.
Saving new boot image to /mnt/drive...
Switching rootfs
starting version 219
Error reading device /dev/mmcblk0rpmb at 0 length 4.
Error reading device /dev/mmcblk0rpmb at 4096 length 4.

Welcome to Arista Networks EOS 4.23.1F
RTNETLINK answers: No such process
New seat seat0.
Arista ssdinit: initialization complete
 
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wethus

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Nov 28, 2020
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Hungary
Hi all,

I have two Arista 7050S-64 switches with the same booting problem (bought from ebay):
LOG BEGIN

Arista Networks Inc..

coreboot-4.0-r-Aboot-norcal2-2.0.9-1287509 Fri Jun 7 08:43:56 PDT 2013 starting...


*** Booting fallback image
*** Reboot reason: watchdog timer expired
...
Copying data from cache to RAM -- switching to use RAM as stack... .
LOG END

After the last log entry it stalls/stops, and not boots.

Does anyone any idea what can be the problem or how can I fix it ?

Thanks in advance!
(full log attached)
 

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wethus

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Nov 28, 2020
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Hungary
Have you tried the recovery procedures here, specifically the last one to recover from a USB flash drive?

Yes, I tried, but it is not working, because aboot is not loading.

I think the problem is the aboot image is wiped from the internal flash but I am not sure.
I can not find the aboot binary image on net to compare with the flash content. Maybe if somebody can send me the flash dump it can help.

I have a working 7050QX but unfortunately it uses a crow mgmt board which has aboot-norcal4 image, but I need aboot-norcal2 because the wrong switch has a raven board.

If somebody can help with a dump image, here is the procedure:
$ enable
$ bash
$ sudo su
$ flashrom --start=0 --numBytes=8388608 -r /mnt/flash/image-dump.bin

It dumps 8MB of data from the beginning of the internal flash to /mnt/flash/image-dump.bin.

I have attached my dump log results from 7050QX.

Thanks in advance!
 

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Jul 19, 2020
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OK, I dumped the flash on my 7050QX. However, looking at dmesg, I see platform=crow and Aboot=Aboot-norcal4-4.1.0-3037060 near the top. So maybe the flash dump won't be of any use.
 
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wethus

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Nov 28, 2020
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Thank you for the dump, but I have the same working 7050QX switch with the same aboot version.
I need aboot-norcal2 image.