This article describes why Juniper Networks EX Series switch might start showing message "Device is running in Recovery Mode" on CLI after software upgrade and interfaces might be down.

This happens because the existing configuration is not fully loaded/committed, even if it was committing prior to starting the software upgrade, since expected syntax might have changed on the new software code, or the is conflict or mistakes in the configuration that the latest version cannot load automatically. This means that the configuration must be checked and corrected, then committed successfully.

Go to configure mode and perform commit check. In the example below, there is a virtual chassis which has me0 and vme.0 configured with address on them:

user@switch# set interfaces me0 unit 0 family inet address 192.168.0.1
user@switch# set interfaces vme unit 0 family inet address 192.168.0.2

When you perform commit check, you will get a message saying that me0 and vme.0 cannot be configured with address. Since this scenario is a virtual chassis, we have removed me0's configuration and kept only vme.0 for out-of-band management connectivity. After committing this configuration successfully all interfaces will come back up.

The message "Device is running in Recovery Mode" will no longer appear in the CLI.

For devices running as standalone switch, the default configuration will include 'set interfaces vme unit 0 family inet dhcp', which has to be removed or deactivated for this to work.

06/03/2023 - KB created.