Thinking back to my days as a new CCNA, I am shocked at how many times I would do a sh run or sh conf and hit the space bar over and over until I saw what I needed. And if I was using a console connection with Hyper Terminal and got a bit anxious, what I was looking for would scroll past into the scrambled mess of Hyper Terminals buffer.
Since then, I have looked for various ways to make things easier on myself, especially when doing a sh run. Here are the best ways I’ve found to make life easier.
show run interface gigabitethernet 1/1
sh ru int gig1/1
This command is great. It will show you the configuration of an interface and only that configuration. I use this all the time on bigger switches like 4506’s and 6509’s.
show run | include snmp
sh ru | inc snmp
Here is another useful command, but you have to think about what you are doing. I use this to see what snmp info is configured on a switch. However, it will only show lines that include snmp in them.
show run | begin ntp
sh ru | beg ntp
Here is another handy shortcut I use a lot. The other day I was setting up ntp on a network. I wanted to see what ntp info was configured and since I knew ntp was at the end of the config, it made sense that I could start showing the config at the start of the ntp statements.
Another great way to use this is sh run | beg 4/1. This will start showing your config at interface 4/1. Just be careful because a description with 4/1 can mess this up.
There is one shortcut that I remember finding at one point, but forgot and no matter how hard I search, I can’t seem to find any info on it. If my memory serves me, it may not even be a shortcut, but rather a configuration command itself.
How many times have you wanted to do a sh run so you can capture it in a buffer and save it to your local machine, but have to hit space over and over to continue? Then you have to go into the download and clean out all the more statements?
Well, there is a way around it and if someone knows it, please post in the comments so I can add it to the post.
The last Cisco IOS shortcut I am going to talk about is how to show contents of a running configuration while you are in config mode, but without having to exit config mode. It’s the do command and it works like this.
prompt>conf t
enable#do sh run int gig 1/1
This last command will show you the running config of interface gigabit 1/1 without having to exit out of enable and jump back in. There are a few caveats though. It is really picky and if my memory serves me correctly, it doesn’t support ? for the context help menu for a specific command. So, you have to know what you want.
There you have it. A few show run shortcuts that I wish I had paid attention to when I first starting working on my CCNA.
Tags: 
