Considerations for Obtaining, Decompressing, and Installing Software

• You must download the software package and transfer it to the server and location (such as the FTP server root directory) that you will use for the software upgrade.
• You may also download the software package from a USB drive using the firmware download usb command.
• You must decompress the software package before using the firmware download command to upgrade the software.
  

  Note

  As a best practice, use 7zip to decompress the software tarball when you use a Microsoft Windows platform for software upgrade.
• The decompressed software package expands into a directory that is named according to the software version. When issued with the path to the directory where the software is stored, the firmware download command performs an automatic search for the package file type that is associated with the device.
• The following firmware download command options are available. See the Extreme SLX-OS Command Reference for more information about the options.
  • default-config: Downloads new software and, after a forced cold reboot, cleans up the in-band configuration.
  • fullinstall: Downloads a larger file selection to cover the differences between 32-bit and 64-bit software or between 2.6 and 4.14 kernel software when upgrading or downgrading the device.
  • noactivate: Downloads the software to the system without activating it, so the device is not automatically rebooted.
  • nocommit: Disables auto-commit mode so that software is downloaded only to the primary partition.
  • noreboot: Disables auto-reboot mode.
  • use-vrf: Specifies the name of the VRF where the host is located. If this option is not set, mgmt-vrf is used by default.
• So that you can address the FTP or SCP server by its name, ensure that a Domain Name System (DNS) entry is established for the server.
• SLX-OS does not support the use of special characters (such as &, !, %, or #) in FTP, TFTP, SFTP, or SCP passwords. The software download fails if your password contains special characters.

Caution

Extreme recommends that you do not interact with the device when a reboot is being performed after firmware update. During the upgrade process, SLX-OS might perform more than one reboot of the device being upgraded. Interacting or interfering with the device during this reboot cycle can cause the device not to come up and the installation will be in an inconsistent state.