Operating notes about booting

Default boot source. The switch reboots from primary flash by default unless you specify the secondary flash by entering either the boot system flash [primary | secondary] or boot set-default flash [primary | secondary] command. Both the boot command and the reload command will reboot based on how these options have been selected.

Boot attempts from an empty flash location. In this case, the switch aborts the attempt and displays:

Image does not exist
Operation aborted.

Interaction of Primary and Secondary flash images with the current configuration. The switch has one startup-config file (see Configuration file management), which it always uses for reboots, regardless of whether the reboot is from primary or secondary flash. Also, for rebooting purposes, it is not necessary for the software image and the startup-config file to support identical software features. For example, suppose that you have just downloaded a software upgrade that includes new features that are not supported in the software you used to create the current startup-config file. In this case, the software simply assigns factory-default values to the parameters controlling the new features. Similarly, If you create a startup-config file while using a version "Y" of the switch software, and then reboot the switch with an earlier software version "X" that does not include all the features found in "Y", the software simply ignores the parameters for any features that it does not support.

Scheduled reload. If no parameters are entered after the reload command, an immediate reboot is executed. The reload at and reload after command information is not saved across reboots. If the switch is rebooted before a scheduled reload command is executed, the command is effectively canceled. When entering a reload at or reload after command, a prompt will appear to confirm the command before it can be processed by the switch. For the reload at command, if mm/dd/yy are left blank, the current day is assumed.

The scheduled reload feature removes the requirement to physically reboot the switch at inconvenient times (for example, at 1:00 in the morning). Instead, a reload at 1:00 mm/dd command can be executed (where mm/dd is the date the switch is scheduled to reboot).