Access SUP 720 @ Console

[cmiano]

Hello Everyone--

I have a new 6509E chassis with redundant SUP 720 / MSFC IIIs installed. At the console connection on the SUP I can see the MSFC III bootup and load its OS. When I try to use the 'switch console' at the MSFC's enable prompt to communicate with the SUP 720, I receive "Invalid input detected at ^' with the caret pointing at the 'w' in the word switch as the response.

After spending several hours on Cisco's web site, I am unable to find the correct command to access the SUP 720. Any help is greatly appreciated.

[thisisshanky · Accepted solution]

If you have the IOS kind operating system on the switch, you have a single console to configure both the switch and L3 module (MSFC). Only in Hybrid OS - CatOS for switch and IOS for MSFC, will you be able to configure them separately and switch consoles between them. What does your switch run, a Sh version will indicate.

[cmiano]

Hello Sankar--

Yes, the 6509E is using native IOS. All of the existing 6509s in the environment here run with Hybrid OS --- while I knew of native IOS, I had never experienced it before in a 6509 platform. I prematurely anticipated I was working with the MSFC III console interface instead of paying close enough attention while looking at the version information while the switch was booting up.

Needless to say, my face is very red this morning. I have not made a silly mistake like this in a while, so obviously I needed a bit of humbling. Your kind tone in your response is appreciated; especially to those of us experiencing “duh” moments.

Thank You for your most considerate assistance,

Carla

[thisisshanky]

Carla,

Thats exactly the same experience I had when I first dealt with a Native IOS. So its not a biggy!!

As far as I know , Cisco acquired most of the CatOS products back in the 90s, and pushed the product into the market before synchronizing the CLI identical to the Cisco IOS platform. Thus two sets of CLI came into existence, the IOS as well as the CATOS. Over the years, people have got used to using the CATOS set based commands, that when Cisco decided to move on to IOS style CLI for the 6500 series, customers are having so much difficulty getting accustomed to the new command set. I am not here to blame Cisco, but definitely it would have been a good move 8-10 years ago. Cisco does have a CATOS to IOS command converting tool which will convert your CATOS config to IOS commands. This tool helps a lot while migrating from Hybrid to Native.

You can access the link here.

http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/Support/CatCfgConversion/catcfg_xlat.pl