Reference Guide

Key CLI features
Consistent
command names
Commands that provide the same type of function have the same name, regardless of the portion of the system
on which they are operating. For example, all show commands display software information and statistics, and all
clear commands erase various types of system information.
Available commands Information about available commands is provided at each level of the CLI command hierarchy. You can enter a
question mark (?) at any level and view a list of the available commands, along with a short description of each
command.
Command
completion
Command completion for command names (keywords) and for command options is available at each level of the
hierarchy. To complete a command or option that you have partially entered, press the Tab key or the Spacebar. If
the partially entered letters being a string that uniquely identies a command, the complete command name
appears. A beep indicates that you have entered an ambiguous command, and the possible completions display.
Completion also applies to other strings, such as lenames, interface names, usernames, and conguration
statements.
CLI command modes
The OS10 CLI has two top-level modes:
• EXEC mode — Used to monitor, troubleshoot, check status, and network connectivity.
• CONFIGURATION mode — Used to congure network devices.
When you enter CONFIGURATION mode, you are changing the current operating conguration, called the running conguration. By
default, all conguration changes are automatically saved to the running conguration.
You can change this default behavior by switching to the transaction-based conguration mode. To switch to the transaction-based
conguration mode, enter the start transaction command. When you switch to the transaction-based conguration mode, you are
updating the candidate conguration. Changes to the candidate conguration are not added to the running conguration until you commit
them, which activates the conguration. The start transaction command applies only to the current session. Changing the
conguration mode of the current session to the transaction-based mode does not aect the conguration mode of other CLI sessions.
• After you explicitly enter the commit command to save changes to the candidate conguration, the session switches back to the
default behavior of automatically saving the conguration changes to the running conguration.
• When a session terminates while in the transaction-based conguration mode, and you have not entered the commit command, the
changes are maintained in the candidate conguration. You can start a new transaction-based conguration session and continue with
the remaining conguration changes.
• All sessions in the transaction-based conguration mode update the same candidate conguration. When you enter the commit
command on any session in the transaction-based conguration mode or you make conguration changes on any session in the non-
transaction-based mode, you also commit the changes made to the candidate conguration in all other sessions running in the
transaction-based conguration mode. This implies that inconsistent conguration changes may be applied to the running conguration.
Dell EMC recommends that you only make conguration changes on a single CLI session at a time.
• When you enter the lock command in a CLI session, conguration changes are disabled on all other sessions, whether they are in the
transaction-based conguration mode or the non-transaction-based conguration mode. For more information, see
Candidate
conguration.
CLI command hierarchy
CLI commands are organized in a hierarchy. Commands that perform a similar function are grouped together under the same level of
hierarchy. For example, all commands that display information about the system and the system software are grouped under the show
Getting Started
27