sample irule for redirect / rewrite

I successfully tested my redirect/rewrite irule against data-groups with external data-files of 100 , 1K , 10K records ....

However, when I changed my data-group to point to a 100K record file , it crashed f5 !

Here's what happened : I had an existing data-group pointed to a 10K record file , which I re-pointed to a 100K record file. I clicked "Update" and the file upload process began but ultimately hung. Next the browser admin page crashed with the "lost connection" message. Attempts to re-invoke the browser admin failed similarly.

Rebooting Linux didn't help much. The browser admin page was very slow to load and ultimately displayed a banner message "General database error retrieving information". I was able to navigate the menus but when I clicked the data-group the browser admin hung and crashed just as before.

Next , I modified bigip.conf , changing the data-group to point to the 10K record file. Reboot, but not luck.

Next, I modified bigip.conf , removing all references to external data-files ( deleted data-groups , deleted irule , modified vip to not use irule ). Reboot, but no luck.

Possibly, BIG-IP stores startup config instructions and/or sequences in its db which is now in an unstable state -- potentially telling f5 on startup to attempt to load the 100K record file ? Or how could my actions have put f5 in an unstable state ?

How to recover my f5 instance ? Or is it totally trashed ?

My understanding is that v10.2.4 should support load/cache of a 100K record data-file -- is this correct ?

Thanks for any help.