I mistakenly bought a Cisco Aironet 1131AG that comes with the lightweight version of the software (designed to use with a controller, part# AIR-LAP1131AG-A-K9), while what I really needed was the Standalone version (AIR-AP1131AG-A-K9), and I cannot return it.
I need to load the IOS for the Autonomous mode on it. I got the file from Cisco (c1130-k9w7-tar.124-10b.JA
http://www.cisco.com/en/US
It does not work. While watching the process from the Console, when it fetches the file via Tftp and examins it, it says "Premature end of tar file" and "ERROR: Image is not a valid IOS image archive" and loads the old image. It seems it doesn't care for the full IOS.
It seems Cisco doesn't have documentation explaining how to load an Autonomous IOS in an AP that came with the lightweight.
Can anyone clarify this? Is it really undoable? Or am I doing something wrong?
Thanks
Fabio
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Well, yeah... I did rename it and I tried with earlier versions also.. I guess the document is just not very new.. In any case, it will not take the file.. I suspect you cannot downgrade a factory-lightweight to autonomous (or upgrade as I see it, though Cisco sees it backwards), but I haven't had anyone confirm that yet. Anyway thanks for the comment.
Ok, not sure if you have figured out a solution to this or not yet but I ended up calling Cisco TAC for a similar case. We had an AIR-LAP1242AG-A-K9 that came factory loaded with the lightweight IOS and we needed it to be an autonomous access point. Coincidentally I had just watched a training video that blatantly claimed it was not possible to go from the factory lightweight version to the autonomous version but I never found any other evidence to prove or disprove this. There was plenty of documentation saying that an autonomous access point could go back and forth between lightweight and autonomous, but nothing stating for certain that a lightweight could go to autonomous.
Anyway, I'm rambling... it is possible. Cisco TAC just sent me the instructions below. One caveat is that it says to assign the access point an IP address of like 10.0.0.2. I did this, started the transfer, and it failed. I later found out that it is because we had the access point plugged in to our production switch (for inline power) and also had DHCP enabled on the network. Part of the way through the update it decided to get a new IP address from DHCP and changed itself to 10.10.10.131 which broke the TFTP transfer. I ended up letting it use that negotiated address and the transfer went fine. I reloaded and now I have an autonomous access point.
----- START CISCO TAC EMAIL
Yes, there's a way to convert the Lightweight AP (LWAPP) to Autonomous AP.
Here's the requirement in converting the AP from LWAPP to Autonomous:
1. TFTP server (tftpd32 preferred)
http://tftpd32.jounin.net/
2. TAR IOS Image:
http://tinyurl.com/74qygz
3. Working PC (Disable all firewall)
Steps to convert the AP to standalone:
Step 1: Enable LWAPP console CLI allow/disallow debugging
#debug lwapp con cli
Step 2: Enable LWAPP ignore internal reload debugging
#debug lwapp client no-reload
Step 3: Configure IP Address on the interface
(config)#interface fa0
(config-if)#ip addr 10.0.0.2 255.255.255.0 ---->>> example IP address for the AP
Step 4: Download the image file from the TFTP server to the AP
archive download-sw /overwrite /reload tftp://10.0.0.1/<imagename.
** 10.0.0.1 is the example TFTP server's IP address.
Step 5: When the access point has finished copying the IOS, it should reload and boot up in IOS
----- END CISCO TAC EMAIL
With that said, I did try the following article also and tried using the "hold down the MODE button while restarting" trick to load a new default IOS but could not get it work. Looking back, I believe it was also related to the DHCP problem where it started the transfer as 10.0.0.1 and then got an IP address part way through and broke the transfer. If I had plugged it straight in to my laptop (probably using a cross over cable) and statically assigned all the addresses it probably would have worked exactly like it should have.
http://www.cisco.com/en/US
Good luck and hope this helps someone.
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by: Darr247Posted on 2008-12-09 at 08:14:17ID: 23130369
Well, you can check that the file is exactly 5570560 bytes, and that the MD5 hash is ada65cb71d8ab2386b8c4bc64e
Then be sure you've renamed it to c1130-k9w7-tar.default before TFTP'ing it.
If it still won't work, it may be because (according to those instructions) the IOS needs to be release 12.3(7)JA or earlier - the file you have is version 12.4(10b)JA3, which would not intuitively seem to be an earlier release than 12.3(7)JA.