Cisco AP Flash corruption issues.
Apparently flash corruption is common on some APs - These are the only Cisco IOS AP models affected: 1600, 1700, 2600, 2700, 3600, and 3700 Series APs.
Some Cisco IOS® Access Points (APs) report no flash access or file system corruption after an AP reboot. This is most commonly seen when a Wireless LAN Controller (WLC) is upgraded.
The corruption can cause these conditions on the AP:
The AP is unable to save the configuration.
The AP is unable to perform an upgrade.
The AP loses configuration.
The AP is stuck in a booting loop.
The AP is in bootloader status.
There is a wireless poller that can help detect it.
To fix it - if you can SSH in or get to ROMMON through console you can try and fix it
If you can get to the AP through Rommon - this is the method I ended up using.
can get into rommon via console by holding the mode button while booting the AP
to do this you will need an a console connection and IP connection to the AP to load the new firmware image.
You'll need a TFTP server running on your computer hosting the firmware image. We're loading the recovery image which is c3700-k9w8-tar.153-3.JF14.tar for the 1700s for the WLCs running 8.5.171.0.
Once in rommon
set
IP_ADDR <IP Address>
NETMASK <mask>
DEFAULT_ROUTER < default router >
tftp_init
ether_init
flash_init
! then try
format flash:
tar -xtract tftp://<IP address>/<file name> flash:
set BOOT flash:/<file name>
boot
!! example
set
DEFAULT_ROUTER=10.1.1.1
IP_ADDR=10.1.1.20
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
tftp_init
ether_init
flash_init
format flash:
! you can also do a fsck flash:
tar -xtract tftp://10.1.1.8/c3700-k9w8-tar.153-3.JF14.tar flash:
set BOOT flash:
boot
If you have an SSH/telnet Connection -
If you can get in through SSH and formatting flash is working through there then you can do this
NOTE: once you format the flash if you can't get the new image on their successfully you're going to need console access to fix the issue.
!stop capwap auto reboot
AP# debug capwap console cli
AP# debug capwap client no-reload
Format flash and if successful then you can continue to the next step otherwise you'll probably need to try and do it through ROMMON
AP# format flash:
Load a recovery image. Like c3700-k9w8-tar.153-3.JF14.tar for the 1700s 8.5.171.0 WLCs
archive download-sw /overwrite tftp://<IP address>/<file name>
If desired you can check the MD5 on the recovery image. If it doesn't match you can try downloading it again. Otherwise, you're probably going to need console access when the AP reboots.
AP# verify /md5 flash:/<image directory>/<image file>
Set boot variable to newly downloaded Recovery image:
AP#show boot
conf t
AP(config)#boot system flash: