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Prepare the USB Flash Drive to Upgrade Junos OS on SRX300 Line of Firewall Devices

Learn how to prepare a USB flash drive for upgrading Junos OS on SRX firewalls, including formatting, copying the OS image, and enabling auto-installation for remote upgrades and recovery.

This feature simplifies the upgrading of Junos OS images in cases where there is no console access to an SRX Series Firewall located at a remote site. This functionality allows you to upgrade the Junos OS image with minimum configuration effort by simply copying the image onto a USB flash drive, inserting it into the USB port of the SRX Series Firewall, and performing a few simple steps. You can also use this feature to reformat a boot device and recover an SRX Series Firewall after boot media corruption.

All USB flash drives used on SRX Series Firewalls must have the following features:

  • USB 2.0 or later

  • Formatted with a FAT/FAT 32 or MS-DOS file system

Guidelines for USB Flash Drives used on SRX Series Firewall

For the list of recommended USB drives, see Knowledge Base article KB31622.

The Junos OS package on a USB device is commonly stored in the root drive as the only file; for example, junos-srxsme-15.1X49-D30.3-domestic.tgz.

Any USB memory product not listed as supported for SRX Series Firewalls has not been tested by Juniper Networks. The use of any unsupported USB memory product could expose your SRX Series Firewall to unpredictable behavior. Juniper Networks Technical Assistance Center (JTAC) can provide only limited support for issues related to unsupported hardware. We strongly recommend that you use only supported USB flash drives.

This feature is not supported on chassis clusters.

Before you begin:

  • Copy the Junos OS upgrade image and its autoinstall.conf file to the USB device.

  • Ensure that adequate space is available on the SRX Series Firewall to install the software image.

To prepare the USB flash drive and copy the Junos OS image onto the USB flash drive:

  1. Insert the USB flash drive into the USB port of a PC or laptop computer running Windows.
  2. From My Computer, right-click the drive Devices with Removable Storage.
  3. Format the drive with the FAT/FAT32 file system.
  4. Copy the Junos OS image onto the USB device.

    For the installation process to succeed, copy only one image onto the USB device. In Junos OS Release 24.4R1, we re-named the software install images. Images named junos-install-srsxme* are recognized by the system to install Junos OS Release 24.4R1 or later. Images named junos-srxsme* are recognized by the system to install Junos OS Release 23.4R1 or previous releases.

  5. Check the drive name detected in My Computer for the USB device. Open the command prompt window and type:

    For example, if the drive detected is drive F, type echo “ “ > F:\autoinstall.conf at the command prompt. This empty file indicates to the system that the automatic installation of the Junos OS image from the USB device is supported.

  6. (Optional) Create a text file named junos-config.conf and copy the file to the USB device. For example, the following file supports an automatic configuration update during the installation process:

    The junos-config.conf file is optional, and it is not necessary for the automatic installation of the Junos OS image from the USB device. You can use the junos-config.conf file for a backup configuration for recovery or if the existing configuration is accidentally deleted.