A Little Farther

Sometimes comes a situation when something is not what it is supposed to be. When everything is not in order. Then you have to go a little farther, dig a little deep to bring order from chaos, to get things working. Such a situation I faced when things were not working after installing and powering up an Ethernet switch supplied separately for expanding  a Mark VI network.

It was not communicating with any device on the network. I understood that the switch was not configured unlike other switches and the problem will be solved if I could configure it. But how? Then the manual came handy. There was a web interface but since the switch ip was not known, it was not helpful. Then remains the obvious solution. Use the serial cable supplied with the switch and try.

I became a fool by the instruction written in the manual. It said that after connecting the serial cable on booting the switch a prompt will come on the computer screen, if not press the Enter key several times and it will. I connected the cable. Powered up the switch and waited for 10 minutes. Pressed Enter for about hundred times. But nothing happened! I began to lose hope.

Then the "linux-power-user-during-college-days" in me woke up and told me, "This shouldn't be the way. How can a prompt come by itself after connecting a serial cable? There has to be something, sort of interface." Suddenly I thought why I shouldn't try the hyperterminal facility for this? I invoked a hyperterminal window and created a new connection using the COM port the switch was connected to with port settings as per the manual. Rebooted the switches and voila! The login prompt was there in front of my eyes on the hyperterminal window.

I tried the default login name and password and it clicked! I was in. Then the next part was how to configure the switch? Though the linux-user was awake but still I was not confident enough with the serial cable CLI. I thought of using the Web GUI. For this a little effort was enough. With the help of the manual I assigned an ip to the switch on our Mark VI PDH. Then I tried to use the GUI by typing this ip on the Browser's address bar and the GUI opened with a login screen! I again typed the default strings and I was in!

After crossing the initial threshold I felt that my luck started to favour. Quite luckily I found one configuration file 'default.cfg' saved in the switch memory itself. I opened it and found that all the necessary configurations were there on that file. I thought of using it for switch configuration. But I commented out the line in the file which defined the user and the password (encrypted) so that I could again log in with the CLI in case anything went wrong. I saved the file with a relevant filename and set the switch to use it on bootup. Logged out, closed every program and rebooted the switch.

I ping-ed the switch with my fingers crossed. It started working as it was supposed to. Communication was through with all the controllers, switches and servers. My effort was successful. The new switch was configured.