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Password recovery without serial port

2924-XL-EN switch.

Now I have done it. I was cleaning up temporary files on my switch and saw "config.text" and "stored-config" and mistakenly deleted "config.text". When switch was rebooted, well I found the very hard way that it no longer had a config.

The switch sort of functions, although it appears some ports don't autonegotiate well.

HOWEVER, the serial port on that switch is inoperative. Had not tried to use it in a long time. (there was a weather event last year which may have zapped it).

I know the switch has a default management interface with ip

192.168.157.1 (from using wireshark). However:

As soon as it connects, I get:

Password required, but none set

and the telnet session is then closed right away.

Is there anything that could be done to rescue this switch from an ethernet port ?

I have another 2924-XL-EN wich is unreliable (works for a few minutes then dies). Considering the first one is without config, if I were to plug the second one and setup the cable as a trunk line, would the second switch then be able to send commands to the "default" first one, or would the later just ignore remote management commands ?

I hate monday mornings !!!!

Reply to
JF Mezei
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Why does the serial not work? Do you get funny characters, or it literally doesn't prompt you with anything? There is no way to rescue other than what you are trying (put your pc in same vlan as the mgmt port, and connect it to a port associated with that vlan). You will need to reset the config to recover the password, but then if you don't have a working console port, you have no way to get in........seems like catch 22 to me. Perhaps someone else knows another way...

Reply to
Trendkill

It's dead. Completely dead. If I plug the cable into my unreliable Cisco switch, I get output. If I plug same cable into the problem switch, I get absolutely nothing. It would have likely been burned by lightning spike.

Reply to
JF Mezei

Yeah if you were getting crud, its probably a speed of the line issue. But if you are getting nothing (not even a cursor), then you are probably hosed. May be worth it to recycle the thing to factory and try serial again in case the speed or some setting did get messed up. But that may be a last resort attempt....

Reply to
Trendkill

Eureka ! I think I got it.

On the unreliable switch, I turned clustering on. I'll name the empty switch "spock" (from "the search for spock where he had a body but no mind :-)

I turned clustering on, gave it a cluster name of "CISCO" and made the unreliable switch the master commander one.

show cluster candidates

this gave me my "spock" switch and it MAC address.

I went back into conf term, and

cluster member mac-address 0004.4dfd.1a80

this added the "spock" switch to the cluster.

show cluster now yields:

And then:

rcommand 1

And I was connected to the "spock" switch which called itself "unit0" and was able to issue commands to rename my config file to "config.text".

Interestingly, I was not able before going with the clustering stuff to turn fa0/24 into a trunk line. It was complaining about multiple VLANs already in use.

It isn't often that one can find a solution to a hopeless case !!!!!

Reply to
JF Mezei

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