Dell Networking- How to Create an ONIE Recovery Live Disk

This procedure is for Dell Networking Switch recovery on a device that supports ONIE. It is used to perform a clean ONIE installation so that a fresh OS install can then be performed on a switch that has an OS and ONIE which have become corrupt and unbootable. Some symptoms of this behavior may include but are not limited to:

• ONIE menu not appearing upon reboot and failing to boot into the switch OS
• "grub>" prompt immediately appearing after reboot of a recently upgraded device
• "Hshell>" prompt immediately appearing after reboot of a recently upgraded device
• Attempting to boot into the ONIE or OS partition via BIOS or otherwise and being met with system failing to boot as expected

Listed in this article are three ways to create an ONIE live disk USB along with instructions on how to use the live disk for switch recovery. The three methods and use case scenarios are:

• Creating ONIE Live Disk USB Using Rufus
• This is performed on a Windows based workstation
• Creating ONIE Live Disk USB Using Working ONIE CLI
  • This is intended for systems not in production and not using OS10
• Creating ONIE Live Disk USB Using Working OS10 CLI
  • This can be performed on a switch that is in operation

Prerequisites:

• Personnel on site

• Formattable USB
• Onie-recovery iso
  • Can be found in the ONIE Software .zip folder on the Dell Support website, under the “Direct Downloads” tab for the associated product, example : onie-recovery-x86_64-dellemc_s4100_c2338-r0.3.33.1.1-11.zip
• One of the following:
  • Windows system to download Rufus
  • Working switch with ONIE that is not in production and can be rebooted
  • Working OS10 switch with access to linuxadmin account

Creating ONIE Live Disk USB Using Rufus:

1. Download Rufus from the following website, Standard Windows x64 option:  https://rufus.ie/en/#google_vignette 
2. Start the Rufus .exe file
3. Select the USB drive to be used as a live disk bootable USB under “Device”
4. Select the onie-recovery .iso file from the extracted folder under “Boot Selection”
5. For “Partition Scheme”, select GPT and for “Target System” Select UEFI. The below figure shows an example of the settings used

Creating ONIE Livedisk USB Using Working ONIE CLI:

 Insert the USB into a working switch with the onie-recovery .iso on it and after rebooting the switch select the ONIE Embed option.

1. If the USB is not detected immediately you can create a temporary directory, search for it, and mount it using following commands:

                       

mkdir /mnt/media
fdisk -l
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/media

         

cp /mnt/media/onie-recovery-x86_64-dellemc_s4100_c2338-r0.3.33.1.1-11.iso 

Create a bootable USB using the onie-recovery .iso image, this command is ran on a single line.                        

dd if= onie-recovery-x86_64-dell_<platform>_<model>_<build>_r0.<version#>.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=10M status=progress

Once the process has completed unmount it, using the following command:                        

umount /mnt/media

Remove the USB from the working switch and insert it into the target system to be recovered

Creating ONIE Livedisk USB Using Working OS10 CLI:

Note: These steps do not require a reboot of the working switch or interrupt traffic, and they will also work on most Linux CLI environments.
 

1. For these steps, you need access to the linuxadmin user account on the OS10 switch. You can enter it by either logging in as “linuxadmin” during the first login prompt, or by entering the following command in the OS10 CLI:

                     

  system “sudo -i”

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2. Insert a USB drive containing only the onie-recovery iso on it
3. If the USB is not detected immediately, you can create a temporary directory, search for it, and mount it using following commands:

                   

     mkdir /mnt/media
     fdisk -l
     mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/media

                 The USB will typically be at the bottom of the drives returned using the fdisk -l option. Usually /dev/sdb#

4. Copy the .iso file from the USB to the desired working directory, the root directory is used in this example:

                        ​​​​

 cp /mnt/media/onie-recovery-x86_64-dell_<platform>_<model>_<build>_r0.<version#>.iso /

5. Create a bootable USB using the onie-recovery .iso image, this command is ran on a single line.              

 dd if= onie-recovery-x86_64-dell_<platform>_<model>_<build>_r0.<version#>.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=10M status=progress

6. Once the process has completed unmount it, using the following command:                    

umount /mnt/media

7. Remove the USB from the working switch and insert it into the target system to be recovered

Using the ONIE Livedisk USB to Recover Switch:

1. Insert the ONIE livedisk USB into the target system to be recovered.
2. Power up the target system and enter the BIOS menu by pressing the “Delete” key. Note that default BIOS password is blank.
3. Once the BIOS menu has opened, navigate to the “Save & Exit” option using the right arrow key
4. Once entered into the “Save & Exit” tab, navigate down to the “Boot Override” section and select the USB to boot into directly.