User guide

A-6 Cisco 2500 Series Access Server User Guide
Cisco Internetwork Operating System
EXEC Modes
The command interpreter of Cisco IOS software is called the EXEC. The EXEC interprets
the commands you type and carries out the corresponding operations. You must log in to
the access server before you can enter an EXEC command. For security purposes, the
EXEC has two basic levels of access to commands, user EXEC mode and privileged EXEC
mode.
In both EXEC modes, you can find what commands are currently available by entering a
question mark (?), as follows:
Router>?
EXEC commands:
connect Open a terminal connection
disconnect Disconnect an existing network connection
enable Turn on privileged commands
exit Exit from the EXEC
help Description of the interactive help system
...
To display more detail about a command, enter the command followed by a ?, as follows:
Router>connect ?
WORD IP address or hostname of a remote system
User EXEC Mode
When you connect to the access server (through a console, a Telnet connection, or a dial-in
connection) you are started in user EXEC mode. In general, the user EXEC commands
allow you to connect to other network devices, change terminal settings on a temporary
basis, perform basic tests, and list system information. The user EXEC commands are a
subset of the privileged EXEC commands.
Privileged EXEC Mode
From user EXEC mode, enter the EXEC command enable to enter privileged EXEC mode.
The privileged command set includes all the commands that are available in user EXEC
mode plus the configure command, debugging commands, and the setup command.
Because many of the privileged commands allow you to set operating system parameters,
privileged EXEC mode should be password-protected to prevent unauthorized use (see the