Help Please: Cisco 7960 Setup

General Help
1

Hi All,

I am very new to this community and I desperately need your help. I am running Freepbx and AsteriskNow. So far, everything is working fine with one Polycom 331 and two softphones. However, I have tried everything and read a lot of online information that could earn me a Phd over the past three months but with no success in configuring the Cisco phones.

I have three Cisco phones: 2 x Cisco 7960 and 1 x Cisco 7970. Now I am at the verge of giving up. You’re my last hope. Please help me. :sob:

Thanks in anticipation.

2

What issue are you having? is it with the Cisco Phones or just in general? if it is the Cisco Phones what issue(s) are you having?

3

Hi Farva,

Thanks very much for your response. It’s just the Cisco phone configuration, everything else is working fine. I really don’t where I’m going wrong.

I have gotten a a point where the Cisco 7960 boots up but says can’t find P0S30203.bin even though it’s there. I have come a long way to even get it read the files from the TFTP server.

As for the Cisco 7970, I don’t even know where to start.

Your help will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

4

Hi Ed,

That’ll be the SIP firmware for the phone that it’s requesting. If you watch the tftp logs you will see the phone request a couple of different files related to firmware/software.

You can download firmware from the Cisco website, however with the 7960/7970 you might need a current SmartNet contract, sorry I’ve got 794x and these all seemed to not require anything for download, although I can only assume because they are End of Life.

Alternatively, with some google-fu you might be able to find a copy to download from a random blog.

My experience is to go with version 8.x SIP images, I’ve had some niggling issues with version 9. Also, I think version 9.x use TCP for SIP (although in my experience UDP was working fine…?).

5

Ed,

Sorry I misread your post - the bin files are on the TFTP server?

I would start with watching the logs of what exact file the phone is requesting. You might find filenames could be slightly different perhaps? It all gets much easier, once you know what file the phone wants then you’ll have goal posts to work towards.

6

What zirophyz said!

I have frequently found that the config file which calls for modules has a typo or WRONG CASE. (Caps).

Also verify owner/rights. did you put them there as root… etc. but your tftp logs will tell you what the phone is asking for and give an error.

also I had trouble with firmware later than P003-8-12-00, and was able to create a login to cisco and download that version for free. thanks Cis!

7

Can you also verify that the TFTP server is in fact running?

Two things you can do to verify this…

(1) Is the server running? Run from a command the following “chkconfig --list | grep tftp” exclude the quotes. If running is should echo back “tftp: on” if it is off, find out why or at least try to start it. “service xinetd restart”

(2) If the server is running, run this command “tshark port 69” and reboot a phone, Cisco 7960 press the following at the same time… Press and hold * 6 and then settings. All three need to be depressed to reboot. After you see on the phones screen showing “Configuring IP” you will see it pull your loads from your TFTP server, it will also show you if you have errors like Permission Problems.

I hope this helps you get this issue figured out, I spent many hours playing with this setup and doing what you are doing.

This is what my test machine is outputting for 1 Cisco 7960

Capturing on eth0
  0.000000 10.10.0.110 -> 10.10.0.4  TFTP 73 Read Request, File: CTLSEP00137                                              FED6C33.tlv, Transfer type: octet
  0.020921 10.10.0.110 -> 10.10.0.4  TFTP 74 Read Request, File: SEP00137FED                                              6C33.cnf.xml, Transfer type: octet
  0.066117 10.10.0.110 -> 10.10.0.4  TFTP 69 Read Request, File: P0S3-8-12-0                                              0.loads, Transfer type: octet
 21.217503 192.168.0.110 -> 10.10.0.4  TFTP 65 Read Request, File: SIPDefault.                                              cnf, Transfer type: octet
 21.355643 10.10.0.110 -> 10.10.0.4  TFTP 72 Read Request, File: ./SIP00137F                                              ED6C33.cnf, Transfer type: octet
 24.482476 10.10.0.110 -> 10.10.0.4  TFTP 63 Read Request, File: RINGLIST.DA                                              T, Transfer type: octet
 24.501218 10.10.0.110 -> 10.10.0.4  TFTP 63 Read Request, File: dialplan.xm                                              l, Transfer type: octet
 24.522858 10.10.0.110 -> 10.10.0.4  TFTP 60 Read Request, File: Neuro.raw,                                               Transfer type: octet
^C8 packets captured
8

I have never really trusted apps like that, Wireshark, etc.
What I do is enable TFTP Verbose and
then do a

tail -f /var/log/messages | grep in.tftpd

That way if there are any other requests that Wireshark or
other apps might miss you have to root console telling you what being asked for
and the inbound and out bound.
here are the how-to links if you are interested
http://wiki.freepbx.org/display/L1/Enable+TFTP+verbose+logging
http://wiki.freepbx.org/display/L1/View+TFTP+requests+from+phones

BTW did you check the TFTPboot Dir and make sure the permissions are set right? Mine are 775

i have set 2 of the 7960’s up before and my issue with them was the dialplan.txt missing (but not the same problem that you are having)