Boot NCS 1004 from a USB drive

Updated: September 4, 2026

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Use this procedure to create a bootable USB drive from the compressed boot file and use it to reimage or recover NCS 1004 when a valid bootable image is not available on the SSD.

Reimage or recover the NCS 1004 by booting it from a USB drive when the internal SSD does not have a valid bootable image.

Before you begin

Obtain a USB drive that has at least 4 GB of storage and a single partition.
Download the NCS 1004 software image from the Software Download page on the website.
Copy the compressed boot file (for example, ncs1004-usb-boot-7.0.1.zip) from the website to your local machine.

The bootable USB drive is used to reimage NCS 1004 for system upgrade or to boot NCS 1004 in case of boot failure. A bootable USB drive is created by copying a compressed boot file to the drive. After you extract the contents of the compressed file, the USB drive becomes bootable.

You can complete this task using Windows, Linux, or macOS. The exact operation for each step depends on the operating system.

Procedure

	1.	Connect the USB drive to your local machine and format it with the FAT32 file system.
	2.	Copy the compressed boot file to the USB drive.
	3.	Verify that the copy is successful by comparing the file size and MD5 checksum at the source and destination.
	4.	Extract the content of the compressed boot file directly into the root folder of the USB drive. Note Extract the EFI and boot directories directly to the root of the USB drive. If the unzipping application places the extracted files in a new subfolder, move EFI and boot to the root of the USB drive.
	5.	Insert the USB drive into one of the USB ports of NCS 1004.
	6.	Reboot NCS 1004 using a power cycle or the console. Note USB boot does not work unless the route processor is reloaded. If you insert the USB drive while the system is running, the first execution of the `admin hw-module loc 0/rp0 bootmedia usb reload` command boots the system from the disk. Run the command again to boot from the USB drive. Alternatively, restart the route processor after inserting the USB drive and before initiating the USB boot.
	7.	Press Esc to enter BIOS.
	8.	Select the Save & Exit tab in BIOS.
	9.	Choose IOS-XR Install. The system detects the USB drive and boots from it. You can observe the boot progress on the console. Admin Console: GNU GRUB version 2.00 Press F2 to goto grub Menu.. Booting from USB.. Loading Kernel.. Validating End Entity Certificate... Validating SubCA Certificate... Validating Root Certificate... Loading initrd.. Validating End Entity Certificate... Validating SubCA Certificate... Validating Root Certificate... CiscoSec: Image signature verification completed. XR Console: CiscoSec: Image signature verified. [ 9.957281] i8042: No controller found Starting udev udevd[972]: failed to execute '/etc/udev/scripts/network.sh' '/etc/udev/scripts/network.sh': No such file or directory Populating dev cache Running postinst /etc/rpm-postinsts/100-dnsmasq... update-rc.d: /etc/init.d/run-postinsts exists during rc.d purge (continuing) Removing any system startup links for run-postinsts ... /etc/rcS.d/S99run-postinsts Configuring network interfaces... done.
	10.	Remove the USB drive when prompted. NCS 1004 reboots automatically. Setting maximal mount count to -1 Setting interval between checks to 0 seconds Fri Dec 11 20:35:56 UTC 2015: Install EFI on /dev/mb_disk4 Fri Dec 11 20:35:57 UTC 2015: Install finished on mb_disk Rebooting system after installation ... [ 116.973666] reboot: Restarting system Version 2.17.1245. Copyright (C) 2015 American Megatrends, Inc. BIOS Date: 11/29/2015 12:02:45 Ver: 0ACBZ1110 Press <DEL> or <ESC> to enter setup. CiscoSec: Image signature verified. GNU GRUB version 2.00 Press F2 to goto grub Menu.. Booting from Disk.. Loading Kernel.. Validating End Entity Certificate... Validating SubCA Certificate... Validating Root Certificate... Loading initrd.. Validating End Entity Certificate... Validating SubCA Certificate... Validating Root Certificate... CiscoSec: Image signature verification completed. Initrd, addr=0xff69a000, size=0x955cb0 [ 1.745686] i8042: No controller found

The NCS 1004 boots from the USB drive, successfully reimages, and reboots from the new installation.

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