Cisco Configuration “Expect” Backup Script

Posted on June 14, 2012 by

I was recently tasked with backing up switch configurations automatically. No problem, right? Wrong. There was nothing to spend on this project so it was up to me and whatever I could do with a script. I had made a telnet script in the past but was not crazy about passwords flying around in plain text. I really have very little scripting experience so many of you will find this very easy to understand and follow since there is nothing complicated about my scripting skills.
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Posted in Networking, Scripts, Shell | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Parsing Cisco Show Command Output

Posted on May 31, 2012 by

If you have done even the basics in networking you have probably used a “show” command at some point on a Cisco networking device. Show commands give us insight into the configuration, performance and issues that face that device. One issue with show commands, however, is that they can be very verbose. Many commands give you way more information than you are looking for and are difficult to get through quickly. Luckily for you and I there are output modifiers to help us parse the output.
I will attempt to teach this short lesson with an example. Say you want to look at all interfaces and see what access lists are applied to them. You could do “show run” and read all of the output until you find what you are looking for.
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Posted in Networking | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Discovering a Cisco Network with CDP (Part 3)

Posted on May 8, 2012 by

This is part 3 of the series on network discovery using CDP. If you have not read the first or second parts you can find them HERE and HERE. So far we have looked at mapping the infrastructure with CDP as well as actually mapping hosts (by MAC address) to switch ports. I wanted to take the opportunity, in this write up, to step away from the Cisco command line and look at another product that leverages CDP: VMware. As you already know CDP is simply a packet emitted from physical ports of Cisco devices. Anything that cares to listen … Continue reading →

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Windows 7 Local Logon Trick

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

By this point most business workstation computers are setup as domain members. If changes need to be made you log on as a domain user with administrative privileges and make system changes. If you need to logon locally for some reason you type the account name in the HOSTNAME\USERNAME format. DOMAIN\USERNAME will then get you back in as a domain user. Typically, through my experience anyhow, PC names are printed on a label and stuck to the box itself or are readily apparent in some way. One network I found myself supporting used the service tags as part of the … Continue reading →

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