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Practice Password Recovery, otherwise it will burn you in the field

BeTheNetworkBeTheNetwork Member Posts: 18 ■□□□□□□□□□
in CCNA & CCENT
Here is something that would be hilarious if it weren't so sad...


I was recently on an engagement installing a pair of Catalyst 4500's, removing Allied Telesis POS's, and consolidating fiber plant. The 4500's were trunked to Cisco cataly 3560's, but the customer's RAIDUS was flaking out on us. I had to perform a password recovery and found that the my PC (MacBook Pro running Bootcamp) could not send the break sequence to boot into ROMMON. I don't remember the last time I performed a password recovery, but I certainly never ran into issues like I did this day. I spent the following two hours searching for a laptop with a break key, trying out multiple USB keyboards, and pulling my hair out. Then it struck me... this stupid thing doesn't take the break sequence, you have to push the Mode button the front of the box to break the boot sequece. Stupid. And I bet in another three years, when I have to perform another Catalyst password recovery, I'll do the same thing all over again.


Here's to laughing at yourself, and working through lunch.


~Brent
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    RoguetadhgRoguetadhg Member Posts: 2,489 ■■■■■■■■□□
    I had issues with terminal's not accepting the "Ctrl+Break" as I've been taught/learned via simulators.

    So Off to google I went. A while of fiddling with the usual keywords I finally get this nugget of information.

    Standard Break Key Sequence Combinations During Password Recovery - Cisco Systems

    After restarting, and restarting, restarting... I thought it might be a boot-timing issue since I was still running to the router to the computer. Nopers. TeraTerm has a different combo! I guess it's a good thing I've invested in actual hardware. Learned a lot of navigating Cisco's site.

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    RouteMyPacketRouteMyPacket Member Posts: 1,104
    Ouch! lol

    I honestly sometimes find myself in similar situations sometime. Here is an example from a recent maintenance window I had

    Ok, so I had replaced a 3560v2 switch with a 3560G which of course I had pre-configured before racking. So there is a Desktop guy who has a switch on his desk for rolling out new clients so I trunked a port, no biggie.

    Ok so I plug in all the cables and after a few went to check phones on desks making sure duplex settings were set to auto. I notice this persons phone isn't registering and his switch trunk isn't lit. I went and looked at the config on the new switch, looked fine and thought "hmmm, interesting"..after a few minutes I went back in to check the patch number at the desk then went into the MDF and looked and immediately laughed and saw I had that patch plugged into the wrong switchport. Doh!

    Welcome to my world. haha
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    sratakhinsratakhin Member Posts: 818
    It's much easier to do password recovery on most HP switches... Just press a button on the front panel :)
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    ciscoman2012ciscoman2012 Member Posts: 313
    Here's a hint..if you're using PuTTy right click on the window and go under special commands. You can issue a break command there.

    I've had to do this before when my laptop doesn't have a break key or it isn't working correctly.

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