[Asterisk-Users] cisco 7940 help

[Rich Adamson]

> >>I've successfuly converted 7940 from call manager firmware version 3 to 
> >>SIP 7.3. just last week. You need to upgrade to firmware version 6 
> >>first, then upgrade to 7.
> >>Also once you've upgraded the phone, you should remove firmware config 
> >>file from tftp server, otherwise the phone would be in constant upgrade 
> >>loop. There is couple of tricks in between.
> >>    
> >>
> >
> >The phone does a version check before attempting an upgrade. If the
> >same, it doesn't bother upgrading again. No need to remove anything.
> >
> >In fact, my server has v2.3, 3.3, 5.1, 6.1, etc on it at all times.
> >Some of those are required (in steps) to upgrade the older 7960's.
> >  
> >
> Rich, I am telling what I saw on my 7940: it was in a constant loop 
> trying to upgrade again and again.
> 
> You may say that Cisco phones are easy upgradable and all one need is 
> just follow instructions, but that won't help the man who was pulling 
> his hair off.

What you've described sounds like a rather common problem upgrading
cisco phones. I've seen several cases like that with the older 7960's
and its likely to be the same issue with the older 7940's (since its
the same code). Lots of folks have seen this and its documented in
the wiki.

The issue goes something like this. The early models of the cisco phones
shipped with cisco's proprietary code (not sip). When upgrading the
phones to sip, one has to step through v2.3, v3.3, v5.1, etc. If that
is not done, the phone does not properly upgrade and you see the effect
of that in your statement.

If that upgrade process is followed, then once v7.x (or whatever) is
installed, it _will not_ keep trying to do the upgrade again. The
phone will check the contents of OS79XX.TXT and/or SIP<mac addr>.cnf
file, and if the phone is running the image described in those files,
it will not upgrade again.

There was also an issue that related to the size of the SIPDefault.cnf
file. I don't remember exactly, but somewhere along the vX.X upgrade
path the contents of this file had to be trimed down to some min length
by removing comments, junk, etc.

So removing the image file from the tftp server is simply a bypass for
a root-cause problem that you haven't addressed as yet.

Rich