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A project log for Quanta LB9A Analysis

Breaking into and analyzing an old Quanta switch

connor-huffineConnor Huffine 05/31/2020 at 23:050 Comments

Not much is available on the internet discussing the firmware provided by Quanta for this switch. It seems to be a little brother to the LB9 switch, and shares most functionality.

This particular switch was obtained secondhand from ebay for $130, so the history and prior configuration is unknown. The CF card was removed, so it is running only from the image(s) on the flash.

It boots into a functional FASTPATH environment, but the version doesn't seem to be quite right for the hardware, I get two errors on boot :

ifconfig: SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such device 

net eth0: could not attach to PHY

These refer to the management ports (a BCM5482, ETH1/ETH2 on front panel), which don't work with the linux image.

There's also some oddity about how the version of the software is numbered, 2.0.0.1 seems marvelously round to me.

(Switching) #show hardware                                                                                                         
                                                                                                                                   
Switch: 1                                                                                                                          
                                                                                                                                   
System Description............................. Quanta LB9A, 2.0.0.1, Linux 2.6.34.6, U-Boot 2009.06 (Apr 19 2011 - 15:59:24)      
Machine Type................................... Quanta LB9A                                                                        
Machine Model.................................. LB9A                                                                               
Serial Number.................................. QTFCA62220249                                                                      
FRU Number..................................... 1LB9BZZ0STH                                                                        
Part Number.................................... BCM56538                                                                           
Maintenance Level.............................. A                                                                                  
Manufacturer................................... 0xbc00                                                                             
Burned In MAC Address.......................... 04:7D:7B:B0:A8:8C                                                                  
Software Version............................... 2.0.0.1                                                                            
Operating System............................... Linux 2.6.34.6                                                                     
Network Processing Device...................... BCM56538_B0                                                                        
Additional Packages............................ QOS                                                                                
                                                IPv6 Management                                                                    
                                                Data Center                                                                        
                                                OpEN API                                                                           
                                                Prototype Open API 

The u-boot version is quite old, but using the md command I dumped the firmware to a serial log and used this utility to convert it to a straight hex dump. This should be in files (memdump.bin)

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