A client no longer needed their three Cisco switches. I wanted to do a factory reset before putting them up for sale.
There are lots of articles about how to do this, but there seem to be various impediments depending on the switch. (These had been configured as a stack, which may be part of the reason.)
The first thing to know is that to connect to the console cable with PuTTY and an FTDI USB-to-serial cable, you set 9600 baud, 8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity, and no flow control.
This thread has pretty good instructions. That at least allows removing the password and configuration. It’s based on this official Cisco post but has some additional tips.
I wanted to get the switches back to the Express Setup prompt for the next users. Cisco explains Express Setup here.
It seems that at least one of the switches may have disabled Express Setup, which by default happens when you press the Mode button for more than 10 seconds. To re-enable (see this article):
switch>enable
switch#configure
switch(config)#setup express
switch(config)#exit
The various CLI modes are explained here.
The final hurdle was that after pressing the Mode button, a couple of the switches still refused to go into Express Setup mode, instead returning
%EXPRESS_SETUP-6-MODE_BUTTON_RESET_IGNORED: mode button pressed for more than 10Sec and startup config is present hence not reloading
Finally this post provided the clue:
switch>enable
switch#erase startup-config
After you confirm the erase and it completes, press the Mode button for more than ten seconds. You should now see:
%EXPRESS_SETUP-6-MODE_ENTERED: %EXPRESS_SETUP-5-CONFIG_IS_RESET: The configuration is reset and the system will now reboot %SYS-5-RELOAD: Reload requested by NGWC led process. Reload Reason: Reload due to Express Setup.
After the reboot, you’ll be asked if you want to run Express Setup:
--- System Configuration Dialog ---
Enable secret warning
----------------------------------
In order to access the device manager, an enable secret is required If you enter the initial configuration dialog, you will be prompted for the enable secret
If you choose not to enter the intial configuration dialog, or if you exit setup without setting the enable secret, please set an enable secret using the following CLI in configuration mode-enable secret 0 <cleartext password>
----------------------------------
Would you like to enter the initial configuration dialog? [yes/no]: yAt any point you may enter a question mark '?' for help.
Use ctrl-c to abort configuration dialog at any prompt.
Default settings are in square brackets '[]'.
“%EXPRESS_SETUP-6-MODE_BUTTON_RESET_IGNORED: mode button pressed for more than 10Sec and startup config is present hence not reloading”
So what do i do here if we don’t have access to the console? I have techs onsite that don’t have access to it. They just need to hold the reset button so it goes online and gets config over tftp. Switch was taken from another site where IP doesn’t match and is inaccessible for me until new config is downloaded.
Works on 3560 models.
@Laura, I think they’re going to have to establish console access using a cable as described at the beginning of the article. Besides the USB-to-serial cable option, the switch also has a mini USB port that you might be able to use. Note that I’m no Cisco engineer; I was just sharing what finally worked for me.