How to access boot menu of M7100

[kedmison]

I have a M7100-24X whose Management IP address was disabled and whose console refuses to respond to key presses despite the presence of a User: prompt.
My terminal emulator and cable are good because they work for another M7100.

As far as I can see the only way for me to recover this switch is to use the boot menu to trigger a factory reset. I have only found boot menu instructions for the M5300 but have not been able to make these work.

Does anyone have an idea how I can get through to the boot menu to trigger a factory reset on this switch?

[DaneA]

Hi @kedmison,

Welcome to the community! 🙂 

There are 2 console ports on the M7100-24x switch, USB and DB9.  There is a console port selection switch wherein you can select which console port to use.  If ever you have not used the USB console port (or DB9 console port), I suggest you to try it either way in order to isolate the problem.  As reference, kindly read pages 17-18 of the M4100-24x Hardware Installation Guide here.

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

[kedmison]

@DaneA thanks for your reply.  I have already connected via the USB console, and see the uBoot output during the boot process.  I see the switch get to a user: prompt on the user console (so my terminal program and serial connection settings are working).   However, when I try the instructions for M5300 to access the boot menu, i cannot get it to work.  

Are the M5300 instructions supposed to apply to the M7100?  

[DaneA]

@kedmison,

I inquired your concern to the higher tier of NETGEAR Support.  I will post here once I got a feedback.  

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

[DaneA]

@kedmison,

I got a feedback from the higher tier of NETGEAR Support.  Here are the steps below:

1. Make sure that you set the console port selection switch to which console port you will use (either the USB console port or DB9 console port).  

2. Once you confirmed that you got a console connection to the M7100-24x switch, turn it off.

3. After a few seconds, turn on the M7100-24x switch.  

4. When the M7100-24x switch boots up, the output will be:

Uboot  M7100-24X 1.0.0.1

### JFFS2 loading 'image1' to 0x1000000

Scanning JFFS2 FS:

once this is complete it will give further output like this:

Image Type:   PowerPC Linux Multi-File Image (gzip compressed)  

Data Size:    17312714 Bytes = 16.5 MiB  

Load Address: 00000000  

Entry Point:  00000000  

Contents:

  Image 0: 2555445 Bytes = 2.4 MiB      

  Image 1: 1581523 Bytes = 1.5 MiB      

  Image 2: 7004 Bytes = 6.8 KiB      

  Image 3: 474 Bytes = 474 Bytes      

  Image 4: 13168238 Bytes = 12.6 MiB

Verifying Checksum ... OK

## Loading init Ramdisk from multi component Legacy Image at 01000074 ...

## Flattened Device Tree from multi component Image at 01000074

  Booting using the fdt at 0x013f20d8  

  Uncompressing Multi-File Image ... OK  

  Loading Ramdisk to 0fcaa000, end 0fe2c1d3 ... OK  

  Loading Device Tree to 03ffb000, end 03fffb5b ... OK

WARNING: could not find compatible node fsl-usb2-dr: FDT_ERR_NOTFOUND.

starting pid 36, tty '': '/etc/init.d/rcS'

starting pid 43, tty '/dev/ttyS0': '/etc/rc.d/rc.fastpath'

at this stage, press and hold the q key until the boot loader is entered.

Let us know the result.

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team

[DaneA]

@kedmison,

I just want to follow-up on this.  Were you able to perform the steps suggested?  If yes, what is the result?

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR CommunityTeam

[kedmison]

@DaneA We managed to log in using the DB9 connector.  For some reason I was able to provision the switch from scratch using the USB, and then was able to see output only (i.e. read-only) output from the USB port after a reboot.  Connecting to the DB9 port allowed us in.

[DaneA]

@kedmison,

Thank you for the update.  Just want to verify if the M7100 switch is working fine? 

If ever the M7100 switch is working fine and you have no further concerns, I encourage you to mark the appropriate reply as the “Accepted Solution” so others can be confident in benefiting from the solution. The NETGEAR Community looks forward to hearing from you and being a helpful resource in the future!

Regards,

DaneA

NETGEAR Community Team