Ugh. It’s been a while. For a few things 😊 Once the snow melted I was outside pretty much all summer. Winter came and Christmas with it. And here we are. January.
So one thing it’s been a while for is posting here.
Another thing was updating firmware on HPE ProCurve Switches. I was able to get my paws on an HPE 5406zl. It hadn’t been updated since ~2012. It was long overdue as a first step towards putting this thing into service.
One of the things I absolutely love HP did that others like Cisco didn’t – was to make firmware available without some form of contract\subscription. Another is that HPE’s implementation of the Cisco IOS is much cleaner/more intuitive.
[CAUTION] I’m documenting this here, mainly for jogging my memory purposes.
There is a firmware order of operations. You can’t jump multiple versions without checking the patching order – some versions require newer bot ROMs
For example, currently, the switch is K.15.07.0008 from 04/23/2012 with a boot ROM of K.15.28. As of this writing, K.16.02.0036 is the latest firmware for this switch, with a boot ROM of K.15.30.
From what I can see, at the K.15.09 mark, you need to load K.15.09 and then re-load K.15.09 in order to enable digital signatures before you can proceed with the next patch set.
So I grabbed K.15.09 from here.
I also grabbed K.16.02.0036 from here.
I found afterward, there was KA.16.04.0025 available so I grabbed it here. ** Note that KA.16.04.0025 didn’t want to load, “Wrong File”. I need to figure out what to do, so I went to K.16.02.0036 for now.
I grabbed tftp from here.
I grabbed PuTTY from here.
Step 1:
Confirm versions:
show flash
show version
Step 2:
copy tftp flash 192.168.70.244 K_15_09_0019.swi secondary
show flash
boot system flash secondary
Step 3:
copy tftp flash <tftpserviceIP> K_15_09_0019.swi primary
show flash
boot system flash primary
Step 4 & 5
Repeat steps 2 & 3
Step 6
copy tftp flash <tftpserviceIP> KA_16_02_0036.swi secondary
show flash
boot system flash secondary
Step 7
copy tftp flash <tftpserviceIP> KA_16_04_0036.swi primary
show flash
boot system flash primary
<rant> While I am an Aruba fan, not a super huge fan of their website. Searching and sorting/filtering is not very smooth. Also, version control? You’d think 16.04 from Jun 2022 would be newer than the 16.02 Oct 2022… So it’s a tough choice – I guess reading the documentation to figure out which version (chronological or datewise) release makes sense… Seems… odd compared to any other firmware/software update practices I’ve encountered in the past. </rant>
Reference
The handy guide I used all those years back is still here!