Before proceeding with the first task, familiarize yourself with the various command line modes Cisco devices use. The most common modes are as follows:
User Exec Mode - signified by the > at the end of the device name, for example, NYEDGE1>
Privileged Executive Mode - signified by the # symbol at the end of the device name, for example, NYEDGE1#
Global Configuration Mode - signified by the (config)# at the end of the device name, for example, NYEDGE1 (config)#
When you first connect to a router, it’s in a user exec mode (>) by default. To change to a privileged exec mode (#) and start configuring our device, the following command is used:
NYEDGE1>enable
NYEDGE1#
There are many other modes that branch off from the global configuration mode, such as line configuration mode or VLAN configuration mode, which will change the command prompt slightly. The most commonly used is the interface configuration mode which appears as follows:
NYEDGE1(config-if)#
Task 1 - The Initial Configuration Dialog
In this task, you will perform the initial router booting process . You will view the different syslog messages that are generated during the boot process.
Step 1
Connect to NYEDGE1.
You will notice that once the device begins to boot up, the terminal window appears. The boot-up process is useful to watch as you can view the router going through its various boot and test stages. Remember, these are real Cisco devices, so depending on the hardware and software of the device, this may take a few minutes. Larger more feature-rich IOSs take longer to boot than smaller ones.
Once the device has booted, you will see the initial configuration dialog appear.
The boot-up process can take a while before the initial configuration dialog appears. You will see the following output:
CISCO2911/K9 platform with 524288 Kbytes of main memory
Main memory is configured to 72/-1(On-board/DIMM0) bit mode with ECC enabled
Readonly ROMMON initialized
program load complete, entry point: 0x80803000, size: 0x1b340
program load complete, entry point: 0x80803000, size: 0x1b340
IOS Image Load Test
___________________
Digitally Signed Release Software
program load complete, entry point: 0x81000000, size: 0x5e8ba54
Self decompressing the image : #####################################################################################################
####################################################################################################################################
####################################################################################################################################
####################################################################################################################################
######################################################################################### [OK]
Smart Init is enabled
smart init is sizing iomem
TYPE MEMORY_REQ
HWIC Slot 0 0x00200000
Onboard devices &
buffer pools 0x0228F000
-----------------------------------------------
TOTAL: 0x0248F000
Rounded IOMEM up to: 40Mb.
Using 7 percent iomem. [40Mb/512Mb]
!<-- Output Omitted -->
Step 2
Once the initial configuration dialog appears, quit out of it by typing no as you will be configuring the router using CLI(Command-line interface).
!<-- Output Omitted -->
Installed image archive
Cisco CISCO2911/K9 (revision 1.0) with 483328K/40960K bytes of memory.
Processor board ID FCZ1820707R
3 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces
2 Serial(sync/async) interfaces
1 terminal line
1 Virtual Private Network (VPN) Module
DRAM configuration is 64 bits wide with parity enabled.
255K bytes of non-volatile configuration memory.
255488K bytes of ATA System CompactFlash 0 (Read/Write)
--- System Configuration Dialog ---
Would you like to enter the initial configuration dialog? [yes/no]: no
Step 3
You will see a number of syslog messages appear, this is normal. Press Enter a few times until you get the Router> prompt. Your output should look something like this:
!<-- Output Omitted -->
*Feb 5 03:00:18.103: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet0/1, changed state to down
*Feb 5 03:00:18.103: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface GigabitEthernet0/2, changed state to down
*Feb 5 03:00:18.103: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface Serial0/0/0, changed state to down
Router>
Router>