Unable to access Management card in UPS by any method

[Anonymous user]

I have an APC Smart UPS 750 and a AP9630 Management Card.

I was configuring it and it was all going well, configured the IP adress via serial lead and then used the web interface to set up the rest.

It was all going well till I uploaded the SSL Certificate, then the network interface went dead.

The whole unit is now just cycling through the same loop over and over;

Network ststus LED flashing green/orange for a few seconds

then it goes green for a few seconds then off

Then a period with no lights then back to flashing green/orange status light on the network port.

I have tried pushing the reset button at various points, it makes the status light goes off for quite a few seconds, then it goes green for a couple of secs then, then back flashing green/orange.

I have tried connecting the serial cable, I can get a connection for about two seconds inb the looping state, just long enough to type apc as a username then it locks again. It randomly prints a sort or @ type charcater on the sreen while it is looping.

So I appear not to be able to do anything with this card, regardless of what I try.

Any suggestions/solutions gratefully received!

[Anonymous user]

Try seeing if you can get it to go into Bootmon mode by connecting to it serially at 56k baud via the little 1/8" headphone size jack serial port, then immediately after pressing the reset button on the front of the card ( use a pin to push the button its inside the small hole labeled RESET), repeatedly keep hitting the ENTER key on the laptop running hyperterminal. If you get a bootmon prompt you can then try reseting it , or re-flash the card serially from there as required.

I experienced spontaneous reboot problems with early versions of the firmware in these cards ( eg 5.1.0 ) so chances are a firmware update is required, I'd recommend going to ver 5.1.7 as soon as possible. From the bootmon prompt this would require xmodem of three bin files contained in the update executable.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Do you know what firmware version is on it? Bootmonitor can be tricky to access. I tend to reseat the card rather than fiddling with the reset button. You can try a reflash in there but this might be a specific firmware issue that a reflash may not help with.

You could try telnet, SSH, or serial access and issue the eventlog command too but it sounds like you cannot get it to stop rebooting. There should be a mechanism in most situations like this to stop trying to boot after six unsuccessful attempts which could take several minutes. Then, you'd be able to get in via telnet/CLI/SSH and issue the eventlog command and see whats in there. Depending on the version too, there may be additional commands we can try.

If its possible to start over, I'd recommend a format. To do this, you'd hold down the pinhole reset button for 20+ seconds. If you're doing it correctly, it will pulse green while held and continue to hold it like that until it changes to a pulsing orange. This takes about 20 seconds. Then, let go, and it should reboot (alternating green and orange rapidly) and then be reset to factory defaults. This format function wipes EVERYTHING including any network settings so it will go back to trying to get a DHCP address as if you installed it fresh from the box. So, this format function would require you to set it up again and we could log in, verify firmware, etc and depending on what version it is, go from there. I also could try your SSL cert on one of my cards to see if causes the same thing if you're interested.