CRS326-24G-2S+ is a dual OS switch, equipped with 16Mb of storage. This makes the storage fill up quickly, especially when upgrading RouterOS from version 6 to 7.7. After several months of experiencing a lack of storage and not being able to upgrade or downgrade, this week I finally got a backup switch for the CRS326.

Today I prepared the console cable for the CRS326 downgrade process with NetInstall from version 7.7 to the factory firmware version. But I'm curious...

After doing "Reset Configuration" several times and always fail, I tried hard-resetting the CRS326. 2 times. Finally I got free configuration of CRS326 with 1200Kb of free storage. Okay, seem like there is still a hope avoiding NetInstall. Instead of downgrading the CRS326, I went ahead and upgraded it to version 12.1 (+firmware upgrade), then to version 14.1 (+firmware upgrade). In the last version I have got around 2000kb of free storage.

The last thing I did was uninstalling the Wireless package. Bump. I've got 3500kb of free storage

Happy CRS with lot of free storage


Hope this help someone.
Lokamaya

There is a bug in RouterOS v6 installed on CRS326. The CPU only count 1, while on RouterOS v7+ its count 2.

Upgrade from 7.12 to >7.13 brings indeed wireless package over as well.
Why ? On a switch ? The logic is lost on me ...

Other then that, it runs pretty nice using ROS7. Keep it there

There is a bug in RouterOS v6 installed on CRS326. The CPU only count 1, while on RouterOS v7+ its count 2.

The CRS326 switches have always had two CPU cores, but ROS6 had no support for this. Both are now available under ROS7.

There is a bug in RouterOS v6 installed on CRS326. The CPU only count 1, while on RouterOS v7+ its count 2.

The CRS326 switches have always had two CPU cores, but ROS6 had no support for this. Both are now available under ROS7.

Obviously a SW update can not add cores out of the blue ... they needed already be etched in silicon.

Not sure why the core count is part of this discussion, but iirc, the CPU architecture of the chip is heterogenous, which the older kernel of ROS 6.x can't support. Thus only "core 0" shows up as usable.

As to the storage... Why are you trying to free up space? It sounds like you're looking to go back to 6.x firmware. That is really ill-advised for CRS3xx hardware, as support for the switch chip really requires ROS 7.x. We've seen a couple dumb issues months after deployment of switches to customers. In every case, I've had to chide our team for not patching a switch that shipped with 6.x before deployment.

As to performing upgrades, the system/package update feature works just fine, with the limited storage space.

Edit: to be clear, I totally understand why you might want a lot more storage, but more in terms of "I wish the switch supported a microsd or USB storage option". I have a couple of them acting as near all-in-one network heads for things like out-of-band networks, would be excellent if they could provide a TFTP boot server in the same space. Keep thinking I'll get around to embedding a Hex/HAP in one of them, but realistically, not going to add such a hack-job to the product line. The newest Mikrotik gear is fantastic, but I wish there was room for a little more "crazy". Something in the realm of QNAP's half switch/half NAS/half router solution.

That side-trip over, what are you trying to do on the local flash? Rose-storage is an option as well: provision a ramdisk. I've been writing some scripts that I'm worried about wearing through the disk. I've found I can sieze 256mb of flash from a CRS326 with no problems so far.

As to the storage... Why are you trying to free up space? It sounds like you're looking to go back to 6.x firmware. That is really ill-advised for CRS3xx hardware, as support for the switch chip really requires ROS 7.x. We've seen a couple dumb issues months after deployment of switches to customers. In every case, I've had to chide our team for not patching a switch that shipped with 6.x before deployment.

I've been running several CRS326-24G-2S+ switches and all working fine with recent 6.x. Only have 7.x on one that came with 7.x from the factory (so can't be downgraded to 6.x). I have a bridge with several VLANs with HW offload, and that just works, haven't seen any issues so far. What specific issues did you have with 6.x on these switches?

I've been running several CRS326-24G-2S+ switches and all working fine with recent 6.x. Only have 7.x on one that came with 7.x from the factory (so can't be downgraded to 6.x). I have a bridge with several VLANs with HW offload, and that just works, haven't seen any issues so far. What specific issues did you have with 6.x on these switches?

Actually, the units in question were CRS328-24p units, which I believe have slightly different switch hardware. Honestly, no clue what 6.x version they were running on. The just spontaneously started leaking traffic between vlans at some point. There was some other chaos involved in the network, but I was responding after-hours and applied my preferred firmware at the time without looking back.

Could be I'm wrong on what was at root cause there, but I've only had those problems with switches our team deployed without patching, and I know the hardware drivers for the CRS3xx line aren't properly supported on the older kernel. Beyond that, I believe a number of hardware-offload for L3 features have been recently fixed. I haven't experimented with that much yet, but it's on my to-do list.