Manager password stopped working after updating J9776A from YA15 to YA16

[ougli]

As the title says, I was beginning to update lots of switches and all I did was connect to the switch and upload YA16.10.0011.swi to the primary image and rebooted. Then the manager password stopped working. I experienced this before and we found no solution for it but to clear the enitre switch and upload config file from backup.

Why is it that other switches which had YA16.10.0002 successfully updated the firmware without manager account lockout but this one from YA15 to YA16 caused it to lockout like I had experienced before?

[parnassus]

It's highly likely that an upgrade from YA.15.x to YA.16.y (where y >= 2 ...and YA.16.10 is > of YA.16.2) requires you to perform a stepped upgrade transitioning on a YA.16.1 build first.

As example...on YA.16.01.0004 (thus quite old 16 series) here you can find these statementes:

"NOTE: HPE recommends that you update to this software from one of the three previous releases (YA.15.16.xxxx - YA.15.18.xxxx). If your switch is running an earlier version of software, incremental updates are recommended. Please follow "Best Practices for Software Upgrade" section of the HPE ArubaOS-Switch Basic Operations Guide Version 16.01 for guidelines about configuration compatibility during upgrade.

IMPORTANT:  YA.16.01.0004 software includes an update to BootROM version YA.15.17. If your switch has an older version of BootROM, the BootROM will be updated with this YA.16.01.0004 software."

So it's important to understand the software version you are starting with (YA.15.?) to understand which YA.16.x interim releases you should touch before taking the final step to YA.16.10.