Posts Tagged ‘Cisco IOS’
Working with Cisco Macros.
As I was going some switch configuration guides I stumbled upon something that caught my attention macros. These macros allow you to create a set of commands that are issued to the device anytime you apply the macro.
Now these macros are very open ended, and have a host of potential uses. For example if you needed to change the management address of switch in a remote location simply create a macro that will do it for you. This way even though you will lose connectivity to the switch the macro still runs because the commands are being issued by the switch not by you from your computer, thus the new IP address is applied allowing you to connect back in using the new IP address. You can also use these to configure ports. Simply create a macro that will enable various features like portfast, port-security, rootguard, storm control, etc then head into interface config or interface range config mode and apply the macro, its an even quicker way to apply the same configuration to multiple ports this can also assist you with enforcing a uniform configuration to these ports leaving out human error (in case you configure ports manually one by one or continually configure small groups of ports using the interface range command).
You can also set variables in your macros, variables are assigned using the $ followed by the variable name. So let’s just say you created a macro that will reset a port that has been disable due to a port security violation you can set the interface as variable within the macro, now when you apply the macro simply specify the value of the variable.
See the below macro:
macro name psecrst do clear port-security stick int $int int $int shut no shut end sh int | include err-dis @
Note: Macros are created from configuration mode.
The key points with defining the above macro are the following, the name of the macro in this case the name is psecrst (short for port security reset, but you can name macro’s whatever you want), then you input the commands in the format and order needed to accomplish what you want successfully. Something to keep in mind is the commands will be issued from configuration mode (config) so if some commands needs to be issued in different modes you will need to account for that. You can also see I specified the variable at $int so I am able to specify whatever interface I need to in order for this macro to work correctly. When you are finished putting the commands in your macro you finish the macro by inputting the @ symbol.
To apply a macro we can issue the following command:
macro global apply psecrst $int fa0/2
As you can see after I specify the macro name I then start calling the variables (and you can have more then one variable in a macro) followed by the desired value of the variable. So in this case I specified fa0/2 as the variable so when the macro runs it resets port fa0/2.
Now if you run a macro and you are not getting the results you were expecting you apply the macro using this command
macro global trace psecrst $int fa0/2
Here we specified the keyword trace instead of apply this tells the switch to show you the commands as they are being issued.
I’ve attached the below screen captures:
Creating a macro within the CLI of a catalyst switch
Starting a macro with a variable assigned.
Tracing a macro with a variable assigned.
Cisco IOS DHCP Server with Option 43 for LWAP’s
Cisco routers (and switches) have the ability to hand out DHCP addresses, so if you have a relatively small branch office & you don’t want to set up a full DHCP server you can simply add that functionality to your Cisco device.
It does take quite a few lines to get this going but I wouldn’t consider it to be a complicated configuration, each parameter is pretty self-explanatory. Let’s look at a typically IOS DHCP configuration.
Now the first thing you want to do is define the DHCP pool with the ip dhcp pool poolname command this puts us into (dhcp-config)# mode where we can configure addition parameters for this pool. Next you see the network 192.168.20.0 255.255.255.0 command which defines our DHCP range followed the default gateway, DHCP lease duration (3 days in this case), the DNS Server the for the DHCP clients, and finally the domain name.
The next thing we are going to do is configure some DHCP exclusions, these are simply addresses we tell the DHCP service not to hand out. We are also going to change the amount of times the router pings an address before it declares the address available.
Now the exclusions are done from (config)# mode (but as you can see they can be entered from (dhcp-config)# mode) along with the ip dhcp ping packets 4. The Cisco device will ping an IP address within the pool to see if it available, by default the device will send 2 pings if they both time out it assumes the address is available, here you can see I changed it to send 4 pings.
You can view any DHCP leases by issuing the Sh ip dhcp binding command. (Yes I know the time is a bit off but this my lab switch)
Now for some bonus content, I was going to split this up into multiple posts but figured I would just roll it in.
We are going to configure Option 43 in our DHCP scope. Option 43 is vendor specific, and is used by Cisco LWAPs to find and join WLC controllers. It’s all done in the following line:
As you can see this is also done within the DHCP Pool at the (dhcp-config)# configuration mode. The tough part here is figuring out the hex value however the hex value consists of 3 parts. The first part is the type which is always 0xF1, followed by the length which is the number of controller management IP address times 4 (So if you have 2 controllers for redundancy it would be 2 x 4 = 0x08), the third part consists of the ip addresses of controllers management interface in hex. (Now seriously did you ever seeing yourself converting IP’s to hex, or did you use a hex calculator?). For this example I used 2 management IP addresses 192.168.2.5 which is C0A80205 in hex and 192.168.3.5 which is C0A80305 in hex. Now all that together gives us the f108C0A80205C0A80305 hex string seen the above configuration.
Now here’s a DHCP packet with the Option 43 field:
Now packet analysis can be a bit daunting at first, but if you go line by line, you can easily make out everything that was configured, you see the option number and the hex value we entered, now your LWAPs in branch offices will be able receive a DHCP address and still find your WLC’s.
For more information on setting up a Cisco device as a DHCP click here. (This guide goes much more in depth then my post)
For more information on DHCP Option 43 and Cisco LWAP click here.
CCIE or Null! 