Brendan Horan Avatar

I scored a cheep Cisco 3500Xl 48 port switch of ebay last week. I am currently using Nortel switches, while i have no issues with them and they work fine, I really need to understand cisco a bit better and one of my 24 port nortel switches is full, hence the 48 port.

I am not going to tell you where or how to get IOS, i am going to assume you have a valid license and support contract :)

In order to update the IOS you will need to use tftp or zmodem. For this I will be using tftp as we can upload the whole .tar package including the useless web page. Also and we already have a tftp server set up. The last current IOS according to Cisco at the time of writing this was 12.0-5 WC17.

  1. Copy the IOS tar file to your tftp boot server, into the tftpboot folder
  2. If you switch is low on flash space you will need to remove the old IOS and html files. You can do that with the following.
  3. Log into the switch enter the "enable" command set and run the following command :
flash:/*

This will show you the .bin file and some other files if they exist, we only wish to remove the .bin in my case :-

delete c3500XL-c3h2s-mz-120.5.2-XU.bin

hit enter to accept the delete

delete flash:html/*

you will need to mash "enter" a lot, for each file under html At this point you should try and upload a new flash via :-

tar /x tftp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx/c3500xl-c3h2s-tar.120-5.WC17.tar flash:

In my case the switch got rebooted! So it fails to boot..( Lets not ask now i managed this feat of dumbness)

The switch will now boot to "switch:" you will need to extact the .bin file from the .tar file and have a local copy. We need to use xmodem via serial port for this. At the "switch:" prompt enter the following command :- First lets set a higher baud rate

set BAUD 115200

You'll need to reset up your connection after this then type :

copy xmodem: flash:c3500xl-c3h2s-mz.120-5.WC17.bin

this should give you the following responce "Begin the Xmodem or Xmodem-1K transfer now..." So fire up your method of xmodem I use minicom. point it at the local of the bin file and wait the upload of the file till take some time, when done the switch will reboot.

Change you baud back to 9600 , I like to keep things standard

set BAUD 9600

Then boot the new image :-

boot flash:c3500xl-c3h2s-mz.120-5.WC17.bin

This will also update the default boot path. You can now upload the .tar via tftp if you want the useless web site, or you can just leave it as CLI. That's it, the IOS is now up todate. I still need to fix its noisy blower fan.