I finally got some time to investigate one of our Cisco Adaptive Security Appliances that was returned from a plant. I've never seen this problem before with an ASA so I thought I would post my findings in case anyone else has this problem.
I hopped on the console and found out quickly it was stuck in a reboot cycle. Here was the output:
Booting system, please wait...
CISCO SYSTEMS
Embedded BIOS Version 1.0(10)0 03/25/05 22:42:05.25
Evaluating BIOS Options ...
Launch BIOS Extension to setup ROMMON
Cisco Systems ROMMON Version (1.0(10)0) #0: Fri Mar 25 23:02:10 PST 2005
Platform ASA5510
Use BREAK or ESC to interrupt boot.
Use SPACE to begin boot immediately.
Launching BootLoader...
Boot configuration file contains 1 entry.
Loading disk0:/asa722-k8.bin... Booting...
256MB RAM
Total SSMs found: 0
nic_plat_add_io_cards(): Unable to get the SSM-4GE slot info
Total NICs found: 5
mcwa i82557 Ethernet at irq 11 MAC: 0011.e939.019a
mcwa i82557 Ethernet at irq 5 MAC: 0000.0001.0001
Booting system, please wait...
I put in a case with TAC and they told me I probably had a bad boot image. I booted to ROMMON, tried to run the commands for setting up a TFTP transfer, and found myself hitting another wall. Here are a few of the things I tried:
rommon #5> dev
Interface Device Information:
Ethernet0/0: i82546GB, PCI: bus-3, slot-3, fct-1, rev-3, irq-9
Ethernet0/1: i82546GB, PCI: bus-3, slot-3, fct-0, rev-3, irq-9
Management0/0: i82551ER, PCI: bus-4, slot-2, fct-0, rev-16, irq-11
rommon #0> PORT=Management0/0
Backplane Data Channel
Link is DOWN
MAC Address: 0000.0001.0002
rommon #8> interface Ethernet0/1
ef_reset: i82546GB_copper Init failed
Ethernet0/1
Link is DOWN
MAC Address: 0011.e939.019a
rommon #0> interface Ethernet0/0
(*This caused the ASA to freeze, had to reboot)
Everything was showing "LINK DOWN". I verified I had a good cable/network drop by plugging in my laptop to the same cable/network drop. For good measure, I tried a different cable/network drop as well.
My guess is that this thing is a paper weight. If anyone has any suggestions or sees something I am overlooking, please drop me a note.