Cisco Catalyst 6000 Series Switches

Revised July 12, 2007

February 14, 2000

NOTICE:

THIS FIELD NOTICE HAS BEEN ARCHIVED AND IS NO LONGER MAINTAINED OR UPDATED BY CISCO.

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Products Affected

Problem Description

Cisco IOS® 12.0(7)XE and 12.0(3)XE2 images for Catalyst 6xxx MSFC modules are being deferred because of software compatability problems with MSFC hardware.

For additional information, refer to DDTS CSCdp53157 (registered customers only) .

Under rare circumstances, writing certain information to the Intel Strataflash bootflash device can result in corruption of other files on the device. In the worst case, this can result in the system failing to boot on a subsequent restart.

The problem occurs only when an un-aligned write is performed to the device close to an internal 64-byte boundary. This has been seen only when writing a crash-dump file (written when the system is already crashing for some other reason). Normal writes to the bootflash (such as downloading a new image) and operations such as squeeze, erase, and so on have not shown this failure.

Background

The root cause of this problem is the incorrect handling of unaligned accesses in the device driver by Catalyst IOS releases 12.0(7)XE and 12.0(3)XE2. This problem is restricted to Catalyst 6xxx MSFC modules.

Problem Symptoms

The output below is similar to what you may see with 12.0(3)XE2 or 12.0(7)XE after a system crash:

System Bootstrap, Version 12.0(3)XE, RELEASE SOFTWARE 
        Copyright (c) 1998 by cisco Systems, Inc.
        Cat6k-MSFC platform with 131072 Kbytes of main memory
        
        device does not contain a valid magic number
        boot: cannot open "bootflash:"
        an alternate boot helper program is not specified
        (monitor variable "BOOTLDR" is not set)
        and unable to determine first file in bootflash
        loadprog: error - on file open
        boot: cannot load "cisco2-Cat6k-MSFC"
        

        System Bootstrap, Version 12.0(3)XE, RELEASE SOFTWARE 
        Copyright (c) 1998 by cisco Systems, Inc.
        Cat6k-MSFC platform with 131072 Kbytes of main memory
        
        device does not contain a valid magic number
        boot: cannot open "bootflash:"
        boot: cannot determine first file name on device "bootflash:"
        .
        .
        .
        .
        
        
        System Bootstrap, Version 12.0(3)XE, RELEASE SOFTWARE 
        Copyright (c) 1998 by cisco Systems, Inc.
        Cat6k-MSFC platform with 131072 Kbytes of main memory
        rommon 1 >

You must enter the dir bootflash command to view the following:

rommon 1 > dir bootflash:
        device does not contain a valid magic number
        dir: cannot open device "bootflash:"
        rommon 2 >

Workaround/Solution

The root cause of this problem is the incorrect software handling of unaligned accesses in the device driver. The software fix was to modify the device driver to correctly handle unaligned accesses.

DDTS

This defect has Cisco bug ID CSCdp53157 (registered customers only) . If you are a registered CCO user and you have logged in, you can view the bug details.

Cisco IOS Versions Affected

How To Upgrade Software

Maintenance Solution

To obtain the next maintenance release, you must be a registered CCO user who has logged in. Instructions are available at CCO's Software Center.

• Software Downloading from CCO via World Wide Web

• Software Downloading Process

For More Information

If you require further assistance, or if you have any further questions regarding this field notice, please contact the Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center (TAC) by one of the following methods:

• Open a service request on Cisco.com
• By email
• By telephone

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