One of the really cool things about Cisco IOS is the ability to move around the file system as if it was a standard unix operating system. I decided it might help a new CCNA if they knew what those commands were and how they worked.

1. cd

cd is one of the easiest commands to use. It’s the same in windows and unix. This will allow you to move around the directory structure of your file system.

2. dir

This command will show a directory listing of the files on your system. You can also use dir ? to find out the options.

3. mkdir

Again, another command that may be familiar to you from using a standard operating system. mkdir will allow you to create a directory in the current location. Why is this useful? Let’s say you are going to make changes to your config, but you want to keep a backup on the router. Make a backup directory, copy the config to the backup directory. Eazy Squeezy.

4. copy

Speaking of copy. You may need to know about copy. I’m sure you’ve already used it for copy running-config startup-config. Did you know you can use it to copy files between different locations and even different file systems like flash and nvram?

5. more

This is a handy filesystem command that will allow you to read a text file. Let’s say you made a backup of your config and needed to be able to read it. Since you cannot do a show filename, you would be able to do a more filename.