Cisco guest shell

So, it seems that finally Cisco decided to introduce a shell for their routers. I know this already exists for their FirePower plaform, but from my knowledge, they just made it available for routers.

Enabling the shell

To enable the feature we simply have to enable iox and then we can enter linux land with guestshell

CSR01(config)#iox
CSR01(config)#do guestshell
[guestshell@guestshell ~]$

Dohost command

dohost permits you to run IOS commands from your shell terminal.

[guestshell@guestshell ~]$ for x in {1..5}; do dohost "conf t ; interface l$x ; ip address 10.0.0.$x 255.255.255.255" ; done
[guestshell@guestshell ~]$
*Jul  4 22:32:39.252: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface Loopback1, changed state to up
*Jul  4 22:32:39.253: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface Loopback1, changed state to up
*Jul  4 22:32:39.332: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface Loopback2, changed state to up
*Jul  4 22:32:39.332: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface Loopback2, changed state to up
*Jul  4 22:32:39.415: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface Loopback3, changed state to up
*Jul  4 22:32:39.415: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface Loopback3, changed state to up
*Jul  4 22:32:39.496: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface Loopback4, changed state to up
*Jul  4 22:32:39.496: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface Loopback4, changed state to up
*Jul  4 22:32:39.566: %LINEPROTO-5-UPDOWN: Line protocol on Interface Loopback5, changed state to up
*Jul  4 22:32:39.567: %LINK-3-UPDOWN: Interface Loopback5, changed state to up
[guestshell@guestshell ~]$ dohost 'show ip route | b Loop'
C        10.0.0.1/32 is directly connected, Loopback1
C        10.0.0.2/32 is directly connected, Loopback2
C        10.0.0.3/32 is directly connected, Loopback3
C        10.0.0.4/32 is directly connected, Loopback4
C        10.0.0.5/32 is directly connected, Loopback5
C        10.0.0.6/32 is directly connected, Loopback6
C        10.0.0.7/32 is directly connected, Loopback7

I find this very cool and mostly needed. I know Juniper has had it since forever, but still is nice to see that Cisco decided to make a step forward. You can find out more about this in their paper or on reddit.