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May 2007

Completely Clearing a Cisco Switch...The Easy Way!

Wed, 2007-05-16 11:29

Clearing out a Cisco switch configuration is always a
pain because VLANs are kept in a seperate file from the startup-config
(NVRAM). There's two ways to clear a switch back to the factory defaults
- the easy way and the REALLY easy way:

The easy way -

Switch# write erase
Switch# delete flash:vlan.dat
Switch# reload

The REALLY easy way -

Hold the "mode" button on the front of the switch for 10 seconds. The
lights will blink then go solid - the switch completely wipes all
configuration and then reboots. Obviously, this method only works on
stackable switches as the chassis based switches do not have mode
buttons.

Pasting a Configuration Into Cisco Devices...Error Free!

Thu, 2007-05-17 08:28

If you've been working with Cisco devices for awhile, you know that the fastest way to backup your configuration is:
1. Do a "show run" command
2. Copy all the output to your clipboard
3. Paste it into notepad
Then, if you need to restore the configuration you just move into global configuration mode and paste all the output back in. Voila! Insta-configured Cisco device. Here's the problem...when you paste in larger configuration files, it fails. Somewhere after about 50-80 lines of config, the input begins to get scrambled and jumbled all around. The reason is the Cisco device cannot keep up with the data that you are entering. So...how do fix this? Slow down the input! Here's how:



Dr. Radut