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Danny_Arroyo's avatar
Danny_Arroyo
Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
Nov 10, 2014

My F5 has a corrupt boot partition and wont boot. How can I switch boot partitions?

I have an F5 bigip running v10.2.x. It is in an HA pair. We purchased a new F5 that is running v11.4.2 and have moved all of our Vips to this new F5 (Also an HA pair). I wanted to use the old F5 in our test environment being that the new one is running the show. So I downloaded and installed v11.2.0 onto boot partition HD1.2 of the standby node of the old F5 HA pair. I then activated HD1.2. After the automatic reboot, the old F5 standby node no longer boots up. Can anyone help me to switch the boot partition on this old standby node so it boots up from the original partition (Please note, the standby node no longer boots up so I have no CLI or GUI interface)? Also is there a document out there that lists the steps to upgrade an F5 running 10.2.x to 11.2.x?

 

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  • mimlo_61970's avatar
    mimlo_61970
    Icon for Cumulonimbus rankCumulonimbus
    Nov 10, 2014

    You can try to boot from USB to recover it. See https://support.f5.com/kb/en-us/solutions/public/13000/100/sol13117.html

     

    Upgrade instructions are usually in the release notes for the release you are upgrading to. I just did 10.2.4 to 11.2.1 and don't recall anything special needing to be done. I usually run it through iHealth first to make sure nothing comes up that could prevent the upgrade, as well as re-activate the license. I've never seen an upgrade stop it from booting, usually it just comes up with no config on it because the upgrade script couldn't complete.

     

  • afedden_1985's avatar
    afedden_1985
    Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
    Nov 10, 2014

    If you have another good volume on the system to boot back into from the bash prompt enter switchboot and the menu will let you select the volume you want to boot into

     

    • Danny_Arroyo's avatar
      Danny_Arroyo
      Icon for Cirrus rankCirrus
      Nov 10, 2014
      I do have the original boot partition but, how would I get to the bash prompt if the F5 does not boot and I cant get to it via ssh? Are you suggesting that I use the USB method that Mimlo recommended, and then try the switchboot command?