Turbocharge your Quanta LB6M - Flash To Brocade TurboIron - Big Update!

[fohdeesha]

@d.ohlin added your recommendations to the site: Add some helpful info - thanks to @d.ohlin · Fohdeesha/quanta-brocade@ddb0f5c · GitHub

 

[EffingWarren]

Do we have any candidates for firmware for the LB8?

 

[hien]

Thanks for this. I'm anxious to try this. I really would like to setup IPv6 routing on this thing.
I'm curious though. Your site claims the LED's won't work and that the original Brocade TurboIron 24x didn't have LED's. However, the manual turboiron24x-hardwareguide.pdf included in the ZIP talks about LED's for the 10GB interfaces on page 16-17. Perhaps the code to control the LED's is just different from the LB6M and the official Brocade TurboIron 24x?

i flashed my switch successfully even with the codes return from command md 0xfff80000 20 are not the same as one from the guide. however, this rom does not support ipv6 routing. Where do we can find the updated rom?

 

[fohdeesha]

i flashed my switch successfully even with the codes return from command md 0xfff80000 20 are not the same as one from the guide. however, this rom does not support ipv6 routing. Where do we can find the updated rom?

There's no ROM for the lb6m that supports ipv6 routing, it's a limitation of the management CPU.

Also are you sure the output didn't match? What did it say? If it still had "vu boot" somewhere in it, you probably just had an older or newer quanta bootloader than the example in the guide

 

[hien]

There's no ROM for the lb6m that supports ipv6 routing, it's a limitation of the management CPU.

Also are you sure the output didn't match? What did it say? If it still had "vu boot" somewhere in it, you probably just had an older or newer quanta bootloader than the example in the guide

There WAS "vu boot" and different hex. I believe that different quanta NOS version / boot loader give different hex codes.
For IPv6, i can add IPv6 address to the interface but not routing.
I will test BGPv4 and report later.

 

[fohdeesha]

Making some progress on brocade>quanta for those who are nervous about a 1 way trip.

Figured out how to copy an external file (quanta bootloader) into onboard flash (loading an external RSA cert is the only tftp copy command where it *doesn't* do a type verification)

also figured out how to copy from flash/memory address to boot sector, now just need to find the memory address it's storing our "RSA Cert" and that should be it

 

[d.ohlin]

Making some progress on brocade>quanta for those who are nervous about a 1 way trip.

Figured out how to copy an external file (quanta bootloader) into onboard flash (loading an external RSA cert is the only tftp copy command where it *doesn't* do a type verification)

also figured out how to copy from flash/memory address to boot sector, now just need to find the memory address it's storing our "RSA Cert" and that should be it

This is great news! Thanks for continuing to keep at it and for the update!

I personally don't have any desire (at least rn) to go back, but in some ways a "1 way trip" is always at least a little disconcerting

 

[fohdeesha]

not to alarm anyone, but can someone who's been running the brocade FW and also has some 1gbe copper port links active, can you verify your mgmt1 port works as it should, and links up at 100mbps or 1gbps, and can ping out (after giving it an address). (check speed with show int management 1)

It seems a chassis has had it's management port die and will not pass traffic nor link up above 10mbps half duplex. 99.9% sure it has nothing to do with brocade FW but want to verify. it obviously works on the brocade firmware as the port is required to pull tftp images within the brocade OS while following the guide. Want to make sure it's not some edge case where it ceases working if you have 10gbe links active

 

[verygeeky]

Here's the symptom that Fohdeesha is referring to: https://photos.app.goo.gl/hXXaHVHjzIv75VG23

In this video, the yellow jumper from MGMT 1 to port 27 demonstrates both sides (the 1GE link off the PowerPC and the 4 port BRCM ASIC). Running system shows 10Mbit/sec and Half-Duplex. It may be completely unrelated, but without additional units (well, ones with intact flash!), I can't narrow it down.

The second management port has link (left LED) hard lit. Management 1 behaves out-of-line with what's expected. All other ports are functional and layer-2/3 both behave as expected outside management.

 

[d.ohlin]

not to alarm anyone, but can someone who's been running the brocade FW and also has some 10gbe links active, can you verify your mgmt1 port works as it should, and links up at 100mbps or 1gbps, and can ping out (after giving it an address). (check speed with show int management 1)

It seems a chassis has had it's management port die and will not pass traffic nor link up above 10mbps half duplex. 99.9% sure it has nothing to do with brocade FW but want to verify. it obviously works on the brocade firmware as the port is required to pull tftp images within the brocade OS while following the guide. Want to make sure it's not some edge case where it ceases working if you have 10gbe links active

I would, but I currently don't have any 10Gb links, sorry! My switch actually isn't even in dedicated operation yet lol. Too much money spent as of late so gotta save up a little bit haha

 

[Lumpy06]

I ended up downloading and installing just the switch firmware. I really just needed a switch. I found TIS08001c.bin and installed. I would have installed 8001e but could not find it.

It might be useful to have R/S firmware installed as part of package.

Lumpy

I'm sure you've seen people try to get alternative OS's on the LB6M due to how crippled fast-path is for a year now, and after a lot of exploring firmware and bootloaders, @verygeeky and myself were finally able to cleanly flash the LB6M over to a Turboiron 24x. They're identical hardware, so the firmware didn't need any modifications whatsoever, a flash procedure for the bootloader just needed to be figured out.

Some new features you get compared to fast-path, definitely not an exhaustive list though:

1gbe SFP support
very well documented OS with a much larger featureset
BGP
properly working stp/rstp/mstp
QoS, traffic shaping/limiting/ACL etc
Q-in-Q tagging
tons of multicast features
SFlow with a config that doesn't disappear on reboot
huge and well documented/supported snmp MIB
much deeper and more configurable syslog features
general sanity
more than 3000 pages of applicable thorough documentation included

The guide is available here - Flashing LB6M To Brocade - FBOM

The markdown source is on our github at this link, if you have any suggestions to make the guide easier to follow, submit a PR - GitHub - Fohdeesha/quanta-brocade: Flashing brocade firmware to Quanta LB6M

We've verified it on 5 different switches so far (including some STH members in private), so if you follow the guide exactly it's quite low risk.

I'd like to thank @verygeeky for all his help and being the brave first one to hit "reset" after completely wiping and replacing his switch's bootloader, not sure if we were right or not. I'd also like to thank @fvanlint for being the first STH member to get with us on discord and help us develop the guide, and be the first to follow it.

MD5 hash of brocade firmware zip: 33a313fb1307e76228337adadeb65df7

 

[Morphers]

mine did not work either.

So uh, anyone buy a switch from this auction? LB6M Quanta 10GB 24 Port SFP Switch Dual Power Supply | eBay

Better yet, anyone buy one and receive it yet?

My buddy Hogie One Kanobi who ordered one from that listing last week got his and it wouldn't boot, upon opening it up we find out someone has drilled what looks to be the main flash: https://i.imgur.com/5cJbx9s.jpg

Both myself and @verygeeky have second LB6M's on order from this place so I guess we'll find out soon. Should have just gone with that UnixSurplus deal but this listing accepted a best offer that was too good to refuse

 

[fohdeesha]

I ended up downloading and installing just the switch firmware. I really just needed a switch. I found TIS08001c.bin and installed. I would have installed 8001e but could not find it.

It might be useful to have R/S firmware installed as part of package.

Lumpy

here's the latest switching firmware: EDIT: the l2 image is now included in the main firmware zip on the flashing site

 

[vrod]

Awesome post and guide! Thanks a lot for this. I am about to go insane with some "vlan bug" it seems with my lb6m. I def. will try this one as soon as I can. Have you tried SFP-RJ45 converters yet, do they work with the brocade firmware installed? Would love to get rid of the hub I have laying in the rack as I currently cannot use any of the sfp ports with this.

 

[fohdeesha]

Have you tried SFP-RJ45 converters yet, do they work with the brocade firmware installed?

Yup, they work. Verygeeky is using quite a few

 

[fohdeesha]

Also an update on verygeekys management port dying: thankfully it had nothing to do with the firmware as we suspected, just a bit of bad timing and some unrelated hardware failure

edit: jk, it's totally this firmware causing the issue. will update the site with info

 

[vrod]

Yup, they work. Verygeeky is using quite a few

Awesome, thank you! But these will only work with gbit clients right? No 100mbit? I have a few management ports which are just 100mbps

 

[fohdeesha]

I have no clue, maybe something @verygeeky can test. If it doesn't work, depending on how many of those clients you have, just put the 100mbps clients on the copper ports and the 1gbe on sfp

 

[vrod]

I have no clue, maybe something @verygeeky can test. If it doesn't work, depending on how many of those clients you have, just put the 100mbps clients on the copper ports and the 1gbe on sfp

Good idea. I will try that. thanks again!

 

[epers]

Any idea if there's something similar that could be done for the lb4m? I have a few here that I can try things on and a jtag for if things go sideways

EDIT - found this, looks like somebody got u-boot to run on the lb4m

If anyone's still interested, I've managed to splice U-Boot into the "Husky" opr image. You can install it like any other opr image, then boot into it and run "update bootcode" from the enable prompt. Note that you will need to switch to 115200 baud after.

http://wiki.subproto.com/_media/lb4m-husky-uboot.opr

Indigo lb4g images will install and boot but drop into the BCM diagnostic shell after failing to probe the I2C devices. I'm working on creating a fork of the lb4g source that will support the lb4m.