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From: asteiner@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Albert Steiner)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.sys.cisco
Subject: Debug woes, hoped for fixes
Keywords: cisco RIP DEBUG Lockup
Message-ID: <756@casbah.acns.nwu.edu>
Date: 25 Oct 90 15:35:30 GMT
Sender: news@casbah.acns.nwu.edu
Reply-To: asteiner@casbah.acns.nwu.edu (Albert Steiner)
Organization: Academic Computing and Network Services, Evanston, Il.
Lines: 26


Just when our busy network is acting strangly, we use DEBUG RIP
and find that our communication with the box grinds to a halt, 
eventually we get logged off--timed out.  We can't get back in because
we time out before we can enter passwords etc.

Calling CISCO tells us this is a know "feature".  DEBUG has a higher
priority than almost anything.  DEBUG should not be used on a busy
production system.

The problem is, thats when we want to see the incomming rip packets.
I know Sniffers exist, but I would like to be able to quickly check the 
state of different networks from my desk.  In particular DEBUG IP RIP
has been very useful in other situations.

I think CISCO should allow DEBUG in production, especially of the routing
information.  It is not enough to SHOW Routes, (although that is very useful).
By default DEBUG should turn off after a short time (2 or 3 minutes) or
after some limit such as buffer limits are hit, or after 500 lines of 
output or some such definable termination condition.  DEBUG is especially
useful for production environments, and a CISCO almost works, this kind of
change would be exceedingly useful.

Albert Steiner
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL      Albert_Steiner@NWU.EDU