upgrade IOS on a Cisco router

Today one job is to upgrade the IOS image on a Cisco 1801 router. To achieve this you will need the IOS image and a tftp server to load the image from.

Here is a free one; http://tftpd32.jounin.net/

1. Download the new image from Cisco. You will need a CCO login (get a smartnet contract to get access).

The IOS image I am using today is; c180x-advipservicesk9-mz.151-4.M5.bin

2. Check that the flash memory on the router has enough space for the new image.

router#sh flash
-#- –length– —–date/time—— path
1 23700004 Jan 30 2012 01:53:22 +00:00 c180x-advipservicesk9-mz.124-24.T5.bin
2 1505280 Jan 30 2012 01:54:08 +00:00 COMMON.TAR
3 931840 Jan 30 2012 01:53:44 +00:00 ES.TAR
4 1038 Jan 30 2012 01:54:38 +00:00 home.shtml
5 112640 Jan 30 2012 01:54:54 +00:00 HOME.TAR
6 3407 Jan 30 2012 01:55:08 +00:00 sdmconfig-180x.cfg
7 2242560 Jan 30 2012 01:56:56 +00:00 WLANUI.TAR
8 217763 Dec 15 2012 15:00:46 +00:00 crashinfo_20121215-150047
9 4 Jan 5 2013 21:14:20 +00:00 FOC100128ZR

69806080 bytes available (58302464 bytes used)

You can see above there is about 69MB available; the image I am using is a little over 28MB

3.  Check your router has the required memory (check the requirement for the IOS when downloading).

router#sh ver

Cisco 1801W (MPC8500) processor (revision 0x400) with 354304K/38912K bytes of memory.
Processor board ID FCZ100521WB, with hardware revision 0000

4. TFTP the new image to the router

router#copy tftp flash
Address or name of remote host []? 192.168.41.59
Source filename []? c180x-advipservicesk9-mz.151-4.M5.bin
Destination filename [c180x-advipservicesk9-mz.151-4.M5.bin]?
Accessing tftp://192.168.41.59/c180x-advipservicesk9-mz.151-4.M5.bin…

5. Tell the router what image to boot from.

router#configure terminal
router(config)#
router(config)#boot system flash c180x-advipservicesk9-mz.151-4.M5.bin
router(config)#exit

6. Save the changes and restart the router

router#wr
Building configuration…
[OK]

router#reload
Proceed with reload? [confirm]

done!