Voltaire/Mellanox 4036 Unable to CLI

[VMman]

Hi Guys,

I wonder if anyone can point me in the right direction as I am rather stumped!

I recently purchased (ebay) a 4036 switch and was trying to connect earlier via CLI so I can configure the device for testing. Upon boot I was unable to see any messages/text with the putty setting provided in the manual.
At first I was not using the correct serial cable but after purchasing a DB9 null modem cable I was still unable to connect to the switch.

I read in the manual that the switch uses DHCP on the eth management port as the default setting however i can't see any request made for a DHCP address via my router so I doubt it is requesting one.

The switch has been reset multiple times and appears to boot and self test as all the ports flash and after a little while the fans spin down to 50%

Any recommendations would be appreciated greatly as i don't know what more to try.


Thanks in advance.

 

[dba]

When I bought mine, I found that the serial port speed had been changed to 19,200, probably by the prior owner. I'd try connecting to the switch via serial with every standard speed until you find one that works.

On the other hand, most people will never need to do anything via the command line. If the switch is working, just leave it as is.

 

[VMman]

Hi Dba,

Thanks for your reply!

I tried your recommendation but none of the port speeds appear to be working

I would really like access to the management interface to setup the subnet manager and upgrade the firmware of the switch.

After some wireshark testing I see that the switches IP was 10.30.0.13 so I updated my address to the same range and I could ping the switch but only during the boot up.. when the fans slowed down the pings dropped.
I did manage to connect to the switch during this boot phase and copied a snap of the putty session.

Any ideas what could be causing this?

 

[dba]

Hi Dba,

Thanks for your reply!

I tried your recommendation but none of the port speeds appear to be working

I would really like access to the management interface to setup the subnet manager and upgrade the firmware of the switch.

After some wireshark testing I see that the switches IP was 10.30.0.13 so I updated my address to the same range and I could ping the switch but only during the boot up.. when the fans slowed down the pings dropped.
I did manage to connect to the switch during this boot phase and copied a snap of the putty session.

Any ideas what could be causing this?

I have no idea what's going on, but it doesn't look good... much more like a corrupted firmware than a serial port connection problem. Can you get a replacement from your vendor?

 

[d2000]

I suggest using minicom if you have a mac or linux. Putty never did it for me.

Just make sure you change the connection to 38400 rather then the default.

I was able to see with a regular null cable. With an issue like that it probably be good if you can see everything from the boot process.

 

[VMman]

* UPDATE *

It turned out to be a faulty cable I had bought as when I made up my own null serial cable from cat5 and other spares it connected via putty just fine with default settings too!

The switch has FW 2.01, is it worth upgrading the FW?

What benefits will you see?