ASA 5506

The new ASA frustrated me for quite a while. First I couldn't get the ASDM to run. Turns out it needs Java 7. I use Java 6 for Cisco CCP (a software predating the ASDM). So after playing with my network I got it to work in a Linux virtual machine (I like to do all of my Cisco networking changes in one environment). Turns out that sometimes on that linux bot the ASDM just stops loading until you restart the software. Well beggars can't be choosers I guess (another reason why the CLI is better... that worked instantly no problems at all). I did find the initial set up of the router a bit more friendly. DHCP is already enabled. ASDM is already enabled, and the wizard in the ASDM is a bit more friendly.

I have 6 of these to configure. Three sites each with a failover unit. One of them is supposed to have wifi. I spent a good amount of time trying to login the the wifi part of the unit. I had to dig around for a while before I found the command "hw-module module wlan recover configuration" after running that I was able to finally get in. I will mention I did use the wrong IP at first the default IP is http://192.168.10.2 while I was using http://192.168.10.1 an simple quick read error. I got the 5GHz up but not the 2.4, still not sure why its not up.

This is mostly a bit of ranting to remind me of two things 1) the correct IP for the wife and 2) the fact that ASDM has to be on Java 7 on in a Linux box. As an aside I also was unable to use Chrome and had to use Firefox to get it to work right.

As an update to this post the 5506 will not run properly in the newest Java either. Java 8 update 51 is the closest I can find to allowing everything to run correctly. On a separate machine I had to revert back to Java 8 update 11. I haven't tested everything with both of them and in part it is because we tunnel into machines that we get some problems. I also found that my Linux vm won't do for configuring everything on these machines as it doesn't show the entire spectrum of options. I am not sure why but this means that I will have to continue to have a windows box (or two depending on what we do with our old router I need Java 6 on).