ICX 7250 9.0.10 config parsing error at boot

Question

We have a small number of remaining ICX 7250s which are running 8.0.95.  They are mostly in environments that require a quiet switch (albeit not fanless) with more than 12 POE ports, and I don't really have budget to replace them.

I upgraded one of our spares to 9.0.10j_cd7T213 to play around.  There are the usual oddities I've also seen with version 10 (prompting for a username on "enable" seems like a behavior change specifically designed to enrage experienced network engineers...) but only one thing I really found concerning.  By policy we disable all management except SSH and serial console on all network devices - it's non-negotiable.

Booting our standard configuration on the 7250 with 9.0.10 yields this, just before the console first prompts for login:

Config parsing complete: 0.43 percent time: 00:10 parsed: [ver 09.0.10j_cd7T213]
Error - Config send failed
Error [1 ui_common_send: Not able to apply - itc error please try again] parsing line: [no web-management https]

show run from a privileged exec does show the "no web-management https" statement, and it does not appear the switch is actually listening on port 443, but, more disturbingly, if I then interactively reconfigure the switch with "web-management https" and then "no web-management https" it throws the same "Config send failed" error and rejects all subsequent configuration statements.

Is this the kind of thing to expect from 9.0.10?  I haven't tried downgrading a switch from 9 or 10 to 8, but maybe this is the time...

tls · Answer

I downgraded the exact same switch to 8095r (I factory defaulted it first) and with the same configuration with the only difference that, of course, 8095 requires me to declare a router-interface, this error does not occur.

Chandini · Answer

Hi Tls

Ack and Thank you for sharing the details.

When you were using version 8095, did you experience this issue, or has it only appeared after upgrading to version 9010j?

Also, would you be able to test the behavior on version 8095r to help isolate the problem?

Looking forward to your feedback.

Thank you

tls · Answer

Hi - I keep trying to answer this and the forum seems to accept anything I post that has a long preformat or code block, but then it disappears shortly after.  So I can't give you the example I'd like to provide.  The answer to your question is that show web does show the current https status as disabled immediately after boot, but, if I interactively (conf t) enter web-management https, end, then show web, then another conf t, then no web-management https, I immediately get the config send error and all subsequent config commands fail.  If I don't enter any more config commands, I can end and see that https is disabled with show web, but, further config commands failing is very concerning - it makes me worry that the parts of the configuration after the no web-management https statement may not be in effect at boot.

I also discovered that the problem does not happen at every cold boot.  About half the time, the boot log will include the config send error, and about half the time not.  It seems to happen more reliably on reload.