You might have experienced that while you are typing a command on a terminal, some stuff get thrown to the terminal by the router or the switch making it a mess. This stuff can be useful specially when you are configuring a routing protocol or changing setting on an interface. However messages like the following, is quite disturbing when you are doing some task.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Router(config)#
Router#show
*Mar  1 00:07:23.487: %SYS-5-CONFIG_I: Configured from console by
consolerun
Building configuration...
 
Current configuration : 694 bytes
!
version 12.3

Above terminal output is a good example. A message has been thrown in between me “show run” command. The router understood the command perfectly, but it we cat read it clearly. The reason for this is logging. Routers and switches use console ports to log messages. You can three options to stop or minimize the logging disturbances on terminals.

Continue reading…

This article discusses how you can disable DNS lookup on Cisco routers and switches and effect when DNS lookup is enabled.

Problem: In privilege EXEC mode, if you type in something other than a Cisco IOS command, the router assumes that you typed a domain name and it tries to resolve what ever you type.

Although this feature is can be useful in some situations, for most of the time, this is a pain, especially if you do not have DNS server configured. The router becomes irresponsive for about 5-6 seconds trying to resolve the name.

The following is an example.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

R4#wrong-command
Translating "wrong-command"...domain server (255.255.255.255)
 (255.255.255.255)
Translating "wrong-command"...domain server (255.255.255.255)
 
% Unknown command or computer name, or unable to find computer
address
R4#

Continue reading…

This might come in handy if you got many machines to install applications or if you want to backup the packages you downloaded using apt, synaptic or any other any .deb package.

This is a nice piece of software called APTonCD, which is very simple to use, even for a user without much technical knowledge. All it does is, create a CD or an ISO image from the packages you downloaded.

APTOnCD logo

Continue reading…