Re: OT: Hidden commands support

Hidden commands are usually hidden for a reason. Some of them become wide
spread, and find new uses, and become unhidden.

Most of the time they are the experiment of a developer to 'patch'
something. Either the solution is not worth the effort to fully document
and go through traditional methods because it's a one-off, it's something
more powerful than cisco really wants the customer to have full access to,
or that by documenting it requires references to other undocumented
references that should not/can not be documented. Some times they are very
specific developer commands to do all types of crazy things. For example,
I've seen hidden debugs and IOS commands change the EEPROM on cards and they
suddenly become a different type of card.

For support - it varies. There are hidden commands that are more well-known
than others. Chances are, if you have the hidden command on your equipment
it's because it was on a public document somewhere, and it has spread all
over the place. Sometimes it gets on there because someone read an article
on the internet, and in combination of any other set of unrelated events,
the problem is fixed and the command stays there permanently. Either way,
the more common it is the less problems you will have with supportability,
but keep in mind that they are at the top of the common suspects list.

Determining the original context and relevance of the hidden command can be
a futile exercise; sometimes it is simple. Short answer: YMMV.

-nick

On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 11:32 AM, --Hammer-- <bhmccie_at_gmail.com> wrote:

> So, I just read up on a hidden command I hadn't seen before that Taqdir
> submitted. I've seen hidden commands before but this was a new one and
> actually is somewhat intriguing to me. So, the bigger question is, does
> anyone have experience with implementing hidden commands in production
> environments and what Ciscos position is regarding them? We have direct
> lines to some Cisco resources and I'm going to ask the same but I thought I
> would throw it out to the group.
>
> --
>
>
> --Hammer--
>
>
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Received on Tue Sep 28 2010 - 23:30:47 ART