A bank had 200 Catalyst 9300 switches running IOS-XE 16.12 in BUNDLE mode. They wanted to upgrade to 17.09 (PKG-only) but feared downtime. Their initial plan: manually rename BIN to PKG (fail) then attempt to use a random Python extractor (bricked 2 switches).
| Pitfall | Consequence | Prevention | |---------|-------------|-------------| | Using tar on Linux/Mac to manually split .bin | Corrupted control structures, boot failure | Always use on-box request command | | Expanding on insufficient flash space | Partial expansion, unbootable system | Ensure free flash ≥ 2× .bin size | | Mixing .bin and .pkg in boot system statements | Unpredictable module loading | Use either all .pkg or all .bin | | Expanding a .bin that already contains .pkg (nested) | Redundant extraction | Check file command output first | cisco convert bin to pkg better
Here’s a skeleton script that logs into each switch, runs the expand command, and verifies output: A bank had 200 Catalyst 9300 switches running IOS-XE 16