Restoring An Unreachable JACE that fails to boot

This article was imported from Niagara Central Community.

Problem

Legacy JACE can enter a state where the platform and station connections can not be made. In some cases these JACE will not boot to a state where the procedures for restoring an unreachable JACE can be applied.

Solution

If the unreachable JACE boots to a login prompt, then depending on whether you wish to load an N4 or AX clean dist on the JACE, you can simply follow one of these two procedures:

N4 - Recover an unreachable JACE (N4)
Restoring An Unreachable JACE (AX)

However, if you access the JACE via null modem serial cable with the serial jumper in place and find that instead of booting to a login prompt, it boots to the following IPL menu, then you must follow the process below, and then follow one of the documented procedures in the links above.

        IPL for NPM 6 (PPC440EP) v0.08

        Press <ctrl-c> to stop autoboot...
        Autobooting...

        IPL for NPM 6 (PPC440EP) v0.07

        Press <ctrl-c> to stop autoboot...
        Autobooting...

        Try again.

        Commands:
          0: serial
          1: nand flash
          2: nand flash (verbose)
          3: sdram test, 1 iteration
          4: sdram test, continuous iterations
        IPL>

Obtain one or both archives npm6 recovery image and utility.zip and npm3 recovery image and utility.zip, from the files tab on this article. Extract the archive contents to folders on your file system.

The extracted content should be the following three files in a single directory:

  jace_6xx_repair.bat (or jace_3xx_repair.bat)
  npm6xx_3_8_1xx.image (or npm3xx_3_8_1xx.image)
  sendnto.exe

Double-click on jace_6xx_repair.bat (or jace_3xx_repair.bat). It will print the following:

........................................................................

Download Tool - for JACE-6 and JACE-6E ONLY!



While connected to a JACE-6 or 6E via serial shell and the following is
visible:

   Press ctrl-c to stop autoboot...
   Autobooting...

   Try again.

   Commands:
     0: serial
     1: nand flash
     2: nand flash (verbose)
     3: sdram test, 1 iteration
     4: sdram test, continuous iterations
   IPL


This tool is intended to be executed after running PuTTY
connecting to the JACE-6 and selecting the IPL command "0".

Once option 0: serial is selected in serial shell, disconnect
from PuTTY and continue with this batch operation.

........................................................................

Press any key to continue . . .

Follow those instructions, insuring first that you're using a supported platform, JACE-6 or JACE-6E, and that you've connected with PuTTY and entered 0 in the IPL menu to put the JACE in a state where it's ready to receive programming on the serial port, and that next, you've closed PuTTY so that the serial port is free. Then press any key to continue, and you'll see additional text printed, similar to:

........................................................................


Here is a list of serial ports on your system:
AUX = \DosDevices\COM1
COM1 = \Device\Serial0

Enter serial port identifier
Valid entries are COM1 to COM9:

Now enter the correct name of the com port that is connected to the JACE, i.e. COM1, COM2, COM3, or COM4, for example. Note that COM10 and higher will not work. If your serial port is assigned COM10 or higher, then use Device Manager in Windows to modify the port identifier to use a single digit integer (i.e. use COM3, rather than COM14). When you press enter, you will see the following text, which will update until progress reaches 100%:

Percent Complete: 0%

When progress reaches 100%, the following text will be printed out:

Now that the serial download is complete connect PuTTY to the
JACE-6 and press 'return' then press 'c'. When the jace reboots the
process is complete and the jace should boot with the following banner:

 IPL for NPM 6 (PPC440EP)

 Once unit boots to menu perform the recover unreachable jace procedure.
........................................................................
Press any key to continue . . .

At this point, the serial port is free again and you can connect to the serial port again with PuTTY. In PuTTY, press c and watch while the JACE boots to the login prompt. The JACE will already be running FTP server, so you can skip that part when applying the unreachable JACE procedures. Depending on whether you wish to load an N4 or AX clean dist on the JACE, you should now follow one of these two procedures to complete the process of restoring the JACE to a clean, working condition:

N4 - Recover an unreachable JACE (N4)
Restoring An Unreachable JACE (AX)

Note: After repairing the JACE, be sure to install Niagara AX version 3.8U3 or newer, or Niagara 4.4 or newer. These versions contain the ETFS filesystem read/refresh utility that prevents NAND-FLASH file system failures on JACE-3, JACE-6, and JACE-7 platforms.