WS5000 DOM Rebuild

[JEric]

I've gotten a Symbol WS5000 switch to use in a WiFi network that I'm setting up for my home so that I can use WiFi radio receivers. My problem is that the switch that I was able to afford didn't come with any DIMMs or DOM (drive). Where can I find information about the required size of the DIMMs and how to replace the OS. The unit that I have has a license # which is to long to include without errors. I've read that the system uses Linux and I can install that but I'm sure there is some other software that is required to secure the network.

Thanks,
JEric

[Michael McNamara]

Hi JEric,

The DOM (drive) is usually the first piece of hardware to fail on the WS5000s. I have quite a few around here that have corrupted DOMs. You'll need to find a working DOM and clone it, then you'll need to replace the license on the cloned DOM with a license that will work with that MAC address of your switch.

I've seen it talked about but I've never heard anything that was successful. You could probably copy a working DOM bit for bit using dd or some other tool.

Good Luck!

[JEric]

I was able to get a working DOM and I'm trying to get the password reset so that I can see if I can clone it. I'll let you know if I have any success, so far I've unable to mount the DOM on any Linux system, it will not mount. Must have some weird file structure, I will try a DD on it but I doubt that I'll have any luck. Thanks for your time.

Regards,
JEric

[Michael McNamara]

You shouldn't need to mount the filesystem, just use 'dd' against the raw disk partition.

Within Unix/Linux 'dd' is just a utility that can copy a raw disk partition bit for bit regardless of whether or not the host knows how to mount the filesystem or eve what to-do with it. I would recommend that you use Google and you'll most certainly find the answers. You would need to create an image file from a working DOM and save that on your host computer. Then connect a working DOM and write the image back to the working DOM.

Good Luck