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Cisco IOS - "serial number" file changing in flash ?
Hello,

Apologies if this has been covered before. I did search, and didn’t seem to see this specific issue.

I have a Cisco IOS AP (i.e. older standalone/autonomous). Every once in a while (I don’t see a time pattern here), RANCID sees a change of a file in flash.

The file’s name is the PCB serial number of the AP:

- !Flash: 8 -rwx 6 Dec 9 2021 17:19:40 -05:00 FOC12345LLK
+ !Flash: 8 -rwx 6 Dec 14 2021 05:31:51 -05:00 FOC12345LLK

Is this a known issue ? Perhaps fixed in newer versions of RANCID (I’m running 3.9) ?

Thanks for any insight.
Re: Cisco IOS - "serial number" file changing in flash ? [ In reply to ]
Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 09:31:24AM -0500, vom513:
> I have a Cisco IOS AP (i.e. older standalone/autonomous). Every once in a while (I don’t see a time pattern here), RANCID sees a change of a file in flash.
>
> The file’s name is the PCB serial number of the AP:
>
> - !Flash: 8 -rwx 6 Dec 9 2021 17:19:40 -05:00 FOC12345LLK
> + !Flash: 8 -rwx 6 Dec 14 2021 05:31:51 -05:00 FOC12345LLK
>
> Is this a known issue ? Perhaps fixed in newer versions of RANCID (I’m running 3.9) ?

I have an 891 w/ an embedded ap802; it does not do this. Maybe you have not
told us enough, but rancid just reports what it receives. So, the file is
changing. That could be a cisco bug (such as DE's debugging left in a
production image) or a file that changes legitimately. I could not guess
which, from the example.

Can you view the contents of the file (more FOC12345LLK)? No debugging is
emabled (show debug)? You're using device type 'ios'?

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Re: Cisco IOS - "serial number" file changing in flash ? [ In reply to ]
>
> I have an 891 w/ an embedded ap802; it does not do this. Maybe you have not
> told us enough, but rancid just reports what it receives. So, the file is
> changing. That could be a cisco bug (such as DE's debugging left in a
> production image) or a file that changes legitimately. I could not guess
> which, from the example.
>
> Can you view the contents of the file (more FOC12345LLK)? No debugging is
> emabled (show debug)? You're using device type 'ios’?

Thanks for the reply.

Here are the contents:

00000000: 0000148C 14A0XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX .... . XX XXXX XXXX

No debug is on. Yes - using ios device type.

It’s not a huge deal as it’s not super often. Not the most elegant solution but I could probably hack that part of the flash / dir code and regex ignore this. Just figured someone else might have tripped over this.

Also I might check to see if there is newer IOS. This is an older AP, so it might be at newest now. I might also post in Cisco’s community forum and ask what this file is.

Thanks.


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Re: Cisco IOS - "serial number" file changing in flash ? [ In reply to ]
Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 03:12:55PM -0500, vom513:
> > I have an 891 w/ an embedded ap802; it does not do this. Maybe you have not
> > told us enough, but rancid just reports what it receives. So, the file is
> > changing. That could be a cisco bug (such as DE's debugging left in a
> > production image) or a file that changes legitimately. I could not guess
> > which, from the example.
> >
> > Can you view the contents of the file (more FOC12345LLK)? No debugging is
> > emabled (show debug)? You're using device type 'ios’?
>
> Thanks for the reply.
>
> Here are the contents:
>
> 00000000: 0000148C 14A0XXXX XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX .... . XX XXXX XXXX
>
> No debug is on. Yes - using ios device type.
>
> It’s not a huge deal as it’s not super often. Not the most elegant solution but I could probably hack that part of the flash / dir code and regex ignore this. Just figured someone else might have tripped over this.
>
> Also I might check to see if there is newer IOS. This is an older AP, so it might be at newest now. I might also post in Cisco’s community forum and ask what this file is.

OK. LMK how the bug or newer IOS research goes. if it is common, the
code could be changed to automatically add the s/n to the list of
time-stamp-filtered files.

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