Cisco "full-help" command - View invisible help commands

The Cisco "full-help" command can be used to display a list of help commands that may not be present when simply typing "show ?" in user mode. There are additional help commands that can be displayed in user mode by first typing "terminal full-help". Once that is complete run a "show ?" and take note of the additional command options. This can also be controlled at the line level using the "full-help" command.

The Cisco pipe command - filter for portions of the configuration

The Cisco pipe command is particularly useful when you need to display subsets of rather long configurations or when you need to key in on a particular point in the configuration. The pipe command is put to use by using the pipe symbol following the show command to filter for anything beginning (the "begin" switch) with a certain point in the configuration or including (the "include" switch) certain information. The switches are similar to the Unix file management "head", "tail", and "grep" commands only they produce slightly different results. The begin switch produces configuration output starting with the pipe begin query. The include switch produces configuration output only including the pipe include query. The ouput in either case will produce a line of configuration at a minimum that corresponds to the query. Multiple include queries can be concatenated to filter for several parameters. Below are some examples.
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To show running configurations for interfaces and their associated IP addresses:
show run (pipe) inc interface (pipe) ip address
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To show serial interfaces:
router# show interfaces (pipe) beg Serial

Cisco "do" - save yourself from backing out to run commands

The Cisco "do" command allows you to run privileged commands on a router or switch from the global configuration mode or greater (such as interface) without having to back out to privileged mode. The advantage of using this command is that you can use it to run commands that are basically out of context. To run this command you must be running IOS version 12.2(8) or later. It enables the use of show, ping, clear, and debug. An example:

router(config)# do show interface gi0/1
switch(config-if)#do show run

Purpose of this blog

This blog is dedicated to the sharing of tips, tricks, and design ideas for configuring networks.