Archive for September, 2009
Quick Tip: Trick Not to Lock Yourself Out when Remotely Administering Cisco Routers
I remotely administer Cisco routers, which can be a bit stressful since I need make sure not lock my self out by do something like removing a NAT command, editing ACL, or screwing up a VPN tunnel. A Cisco support person pointed out to me that I can use the reload command to schedule reboots, so if I lock myself out, I just have to wait until that timer runs out. If I don’t need it, I can cancel the scheduled reload. So, before you start running, copy the running configuration if you are happy with it using ‘copy run start’. Then you can use this trick as follows:
Lab1#copy run start Destination filename [startup-config]? Building configuration... [OK] Lab1#reload in 8 Reload scheduled in 8 minutes by console Reload reason: Reload Command Proceed with reload? [confirm]y Lab1# Lab1#show reload Reload scheduled in 7 minutes by console Reload reason: Reload Command Lab1#reload in 12 Reload scheduled in 12 minutes by console Reload reason: Reload Command Proceed with reload? [confirm]y Lab1#show reload Reload scheduled in 11 minutes by console Reload reason: Reload Command Lab1#reload cancel *** *** --- SHUTDOWN ABORTED --- *** Lab1#show reload No reload is scheduled. Lab1#
Notice in line 13 you can reset or bump up the timer. And you can always use ’show reload’ to see how much time you have. Of course, now you have to be careful not to let the timer run out or forget to remove it.