Cisco 831 Nightmare

I have a cisco 831 fresh out of the box. CRWS and telnet were working
fine. I reconfigured the router via telnet with the 'setup' command.
I was asked this:
Would you like to enter the initial configuration dialog [yes]:
I said yes.

I gave it a new IP address and said to no all the details (rip etc.).
I saved the config to flash. I restarted my laptop once I lost the
connection. When the laptop comes back, no DHCP.

I set a static address and I can ping the router. But I can't telnet
to it and CRWS isn't working (it's opens the inital page in the
browser but fails to connect.)

I can't find any info on this 'setup' command and how destructive it
is. Can anybody shed some light or point me in the right direction??
Go to get this kit up and running this week at work.

Cheers.

 

Matt:

If it is fresh out of the box, and you are configuring it, it is likely that
you have physical access to it. So use the console port to configure it,
and end your nightmare. I just checked Cisco's website and confirmed that
the Cisco 831 router has a console port.

The router should have come with a cable that you can use to connect to the
console port, and the documentation has the settings you should use for
console access.

If you were using a product by some other vendors, you might need to hold a
reset button down and clear your settings and start fresh. Cisco makes it
easier by providing a console port, so use it.

Best regards,

Tom Larus, CCIE #10,014
Author of CCIE Warm-Up: Advice and Learning Labs
http://www.ipexpert.com/products_services/product.asp?sku=ip7777

 

The auto'setup' via the command line CLI doesn't really know what CRWS
is, and by setting it up through here, you pretty much made it to be
configured by CLI only until you setup all the pieces that CRWS needs
again (ie. setting up a DHCP server, turning on the HTTP server, and
configing the ethernet in private subnet range).

Its really not that useful of a utility, I don't know of anybody that
really can get a full setup done with it. After running it, you will
have to go through and setup other things via the CLI to ensure remote
access into the box (ie. this command is almost always run by being on
the console).

You can restore it, but I'd recommand not using the auto'setup' of the
CLI. The steps to get back in is to hook up that blue console cable
that came with it into the console port. Hook it up to your computer's
serial port, run up a terminal program like HyperTerminal or Zterm,
and then 'enable' yourself on the CLI. If you want to start fresh
issue a 'write erase' command and 'reload' to reboot the box.

This should get you back to a spot where you can run CRWS again. Or
you can continue on with the CLI setting up what you need if you
want. Cisco has been CLI mode for so long, thats really where most
people do their configs.

 

Might not answer your question: The latest tool to configure c831
routers is SDM and not CRWS. Visit www.cisco.com/go/sdm for more details.

Ravikumar

 

CRWS is a replacement for the setup command. You should run CRWS *or*
setup, not both. CRWS presupposes a specific IP address (10.10.10.10) and
other config bits... if you changed that with setup, CRWS will not run.
CRWS is designed to be run instead of setup.

Setup may have also erased out some of the CRWS initial config in the box,
depending on exactly what you did.

You may be able to say "copy webflash:ConfigExp.cfg startup-config" from the
console command line (in enable mode) to restore the initial config. Then
just reboot, and connect with CRWS. That will undo any stuff that setup
did, provided that webflash was not erased or damaged.

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/secursw/ps5318/prod_installation_guide09186a008017dcc8.html
may be helpful.

You will need to reinstall the initial CRWS startup config.

See also http://www.cisco.com/pcgi-bin/tablebuild.pl/crws for relevant
downloads, if webflash is damaged.