Fortigate 81F frozen after update

[jcrower]

Hey all,

Have a Fortigate 81F.  Came with firmware 6.4.? (can't remember) and I ran the update process via the web GUI to update it to 7.0.15.

It is now stuck with a static orange power led and the 3 green bars on the left, no other leds are lit.  I am getting no response via console cable.

I have logged a ticket with Fortinet.  I didn't want to power cycle it just in case.  Has anyone had this before and resolved it?

thanks

j

[Alibek_Amanat]

Hi, you need to connect via console cabel on console port. After use putty programm, to connect terminal, reboot fortigate and wait answer from terminal. Use boot from backup and enjoy^)

[hbac]

Hi @jcrower,

Please make sure you follow this article for console connection: https://community.fortinet.com/t5/FortiGate/Technical-Tip-How-to-connect-to-the-FortiGate-console-po...

If it is not responding, you will need to power cycle it. 

Regards,

[ede_pfau · Accepted solution]

That must be really annoying. I'm sorry that you've got a tomato apparently.

No need to _not_ reboot. On the contrary, the FGT sends messages to the console port during boot which would definitively help understanding what the cause is.

So, you will need to get access via the Console port, this is important.

I assume you've got a Fortinet console cable, probably included with the FGT. Nowadays it's a serial-to-USB converter cable. When you connect the cable to your PC, (hopefully) a driver will be installed and a virtual COM port created. You can check that with Device Manager.

Then, install and run PuTTY, create a new telnet (!) session, use the virtual COM port (e.g. COM7), and speed 9600 baud, 8 bits (which is default). Hit Enter a few times while the FGT is running and look if you get a response.

If you get so far as seeing a menu, come back here for more step-by-step instructions. There are a lot of users who have used the BIOS/pre-OS access, it's basically the same all across the models.

[jcrower]

Thanks everyone for the responses.  Back up and running!

Extra written kudos to you all for giving me a much better response than what the official Foritnet support gave me.  They just said that jumping from 6.4.x straight to 7 isn't supported... and that's it, nothing about how to recover.  Why did FortiOS give me that option if it isn't supported?

Thanks again!

[jcrower]

Decided to follow Fortinet's upgrade path advice.  Got to 7.0.10, then it froze again upgrading from that to 7.0.15.

Tried upgrading from 7.0.10 to 7.0.12 and got an error that it couldn't download the image.

Upgraded from 7.0.10 to 7.0.13 (said it would install 7.0.12 as an increment)... success!

Upgraded from 7.0.13 to 7.0.15 success!