NX7500 comes up with different MAC and S/N after reboot

[manuel_konrad]

Hello altogether,

I have a very strange problem with two controllers (NX7500).
The controllers work as a l2tpv3 tunnel endpoint for guest traffic from different sites. Today I found out that one controller wasn’t reachable anymore. I connected to the controller through the serial console port and found out that the device lost it’s base mac address. Instead of the former MAC address it now shows a new MAC address (belonging to ADVANTECH CO., LTD.) and a corresponding new serial number. If I do a “show version” I can see a blank space after “Model number is”, so it lost that information as well. I did a reboot on the second controller and had the same error. Apart from that the controllers seem to work fine, I just had to reconfigure according to the new MAC.
Both controller are running with an old firmware (5.8.4.0-034R) and I intended to do an upgrade. However, this should not be the source of the problem I think. I never saw a device change it’s base mac address and it’s corresponding serial number on it’s own.

Is that problem known to anyone?

Best regards,
Manuel Konrad

[manuel_konrad · Accepted solution]

Hello Ovais,

I opened a ticket. It seems like disconnecting the controller from the power for at least 5 minutes solves the problem. After powering on the controller it will come back up with its original MAC and serial number. A normal reboot won’t fix it, it’s necessary to pull the power plug for at least 5 minutes.

Regards,

Manuel

[Ovais_Qayyum]

Manuel,

This message looks familiar. It surfaced on earlier versions of the 5.8.x builds on different controller models. I am sure that upgrading the controller to the latest build will fix it but I would recommend you to open a GTAC case first and work with them, send them the crash info to confirm that it's a known issue.  

Regards,

Ovais 

[manuel_konrad]

Hello Ovais,

yes a crash file has been generated. It looks like the first controller had a kernel panic.
This is the only suspicious entry:
<0>Kernel panic - not syncing: Watchdog pre-timeout

However, the second controller doesn’t have a crash file.

Best regards,

Manuel

[Ovais_Qayyum]

Hi Manuel,

Try checking if the controller has generated any crash files, if something failed it would generate one. 

Use the following commands to check and download crash files:

VX9000#service show crash-info

VX9000#copy flash:/crashinfo/ (specify tftp path)

You should also consider upgrading your controllers, 5.8.4.x was one of the earliest releases that supported NX7500, between 5.8.4.x and the latest builds, numerous fixes and enhancements were made.  

Regards,

Ovais