Lately I upgraded a Aruba Networks wireless controller or at least I tried…… The upload of a new image to the controller has two steps. First the copy process from a TFTP server to the controller and second the actual writing of the new firmware image to flash (system partition). The second step kept showing me exclamation marks for minutes. I left it running for one hour and finally decided to break the upload by ending the SSH session and starting a new SSH session. I wasn’t able to connect to the controller via SSH and physical access via the console didn’t work either. So I decided to reboot the controller via the hard reset. The controller rebooted the old system partition, but I noticed that the new system partition was imported and digitally signed (check via: show image version).

I changed the boot parameter to boot the new software and rebooted the controller. I received the following error message on the console after the reboot.

Ancillary image stored on flash is not for this release
************************************************************
* WARNING: An additional image upgrade is required to complete the *
* installation of the AP and WebUI files. Please upgrade the boot *
* partition again and reload the controller. *
************************************************************

I decided to upload the firmware a second time to the same system partition, but this time the controller “told” me that there wasn’t enough free space on the flash drive so I couldn’t copy the file. I noticed that I only had 35M flash storage left (check via: show storage).

I deleted some files from flash (via command: delete filename <file name>), but I couldn’t free enough space to copy the image a second time. Finally I used the tar command to clean up enough storage. The tar command archives a directory and creates a tar file in the flash memory, which can be deleted. The syntax is:

tar clean {crash|flash|logs}| crash | flash | logs {tech-support|user}}

I ran the commands:

tar crash
tar flash
tar logs.

This creates three separate files in the flash memory. The files can be deleted via the commands:

tar clean flash
tar clean logs
tar clean crash

After running these commands I had113.3M flash storage available, which is more than enough to copy the new firmware a second time to the system partition.

In my situation the crash files were the reason I didn’t have enough flash memory. Because I did a hard reset the controller created a lot of crash files, which are stored in flash memory.

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René Jorissen

Co-owner and Solution Specialist at 4IP Solutions

René Jorissen works as Solution Specialist for 4IP in the Netherlands. Network Infrastructures are the primary focus. René works with equipment of multiple vendors, like Cisco, Aruba Networks, FortiNet, HP Networking, Juniper Networks, RSA SecurID, AeroHive, Microsoft and many more. René is Aruba Certified Edge Expert (ACEX #26), Aruba Certified Mobility Expert (ACMX #438), Aruba Certified ClearPass Expert (ACCX #725), Aruba Certified Design Expert (ACDX #760), CCNP R&S, FCNSP and Certified Ethical Hacker (CEF) certified. You can follow René on Twitter and LinkedIn.

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