Automation & Tools

An Essential Alias for Forgetful Engineers Like Myself (Updated)

An IOS alias that runs show commands from config mode without typing do, and an NX-OS alias that brings wr back on Nexus gear.

Tony Mattke · 2009.07.20 · updated 2026.07.29 · 1 min read

How many times a day do you issue a show command from configuration mode ? If you’re anything like me, its enough to get annoying. Luckily Cisco has given us the ability to user define aliases, here is a simple solution to this issue.

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Router(config)#alias configure show do show

While this fixes part of the issue, you’ll need to configure additional aliases for each configuration mode that you wish to use this in. I would certainly at least setup interface and router. Are there any handy alises you use every day? Comment below to share them with us!

Update: I had to update this article to include another alias I’ve configured recently on our Nexus gear. NX-OS has eliminated the wr command to write memory, forcing you to use copy running-config startup-config or a shortened version like copy run start. Either way, I always forget at least once a day. Using the following alias we can restore that functionality!

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N7K(config)#cli alias name wr copy running-config startup-config
Topics
Previous in Cisco IOS Tips · part 7 Best Practices and Securing Cisco IOS Next in Cisco IOS Tips · part 9 Testing TCP Connectivity on Cisco Devices

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Comments

2 archived comments from Disqus 2009–2010
Tony
Another one I use quite commonly is alias exec proc show processes cpu sorted | exclude 0.00% 0.00% 0.00% Which shows a sorted list of cpu useage while excluded all idle processes
Dragos
I’ve tried your proc alias on a number of IOS the latest being 12.4(12.2r)T , but it gives me the same output like the full command including the idle processes . It seems to be ignoring the content after the pipe . I get that with all the aliases i’ve been using . What IOS did you try that on ?