iamjeffvader's studymotron and rantatorium

Service Router OS is the operating system that runs on Alcatel-Lucent 7×50 and 7210 routers and switches.  It’s a pretty handy OS and I just love it in the same way Kevin Keegan would love it if we beat them.  It is well structured and very flexible and, once you get used to it, it kicks the pants off other vendors I have used, in my opinion.

There is a distinct lack of information that I have found on the Internet for configuring these boxes, especially considering the 7750 is apparently number 1 or 2 in the PE market in Europe.  In this post I will cover some basic system configurations to get you going.

I will be using SR1 and SR7 routers for config throughout these posts although there are other models available, e.g. SR12.  The SR1 has a single processor and line card with two daughter card slots (MDA) whereas the SR7/12 have dual processors and five and ten line card slots respectively.

In this post I will be using an SR7, its processor slots are named A and B and the line cards are numbered 1-5.  The active processor is indicated by either A: or B: at the CLI prompt. Each daughter slot is labelled x/1 or x/2, e.g. slot 2 sub-slot 2 is MDA 2/2.

Each processor (SF/CPM) holds a male DB9 console connector (with DCE/DTE toggle switch), RJ45 Ethernet management port and three compact flash slots.  The SROS image is stored in cf3 and cf1/2 can be used to store log files etc.

In order to boot the chassis we need to configure the Boot Options File (bof) to locate the image and config files.

To configure the image and config locations point the bof at the directory/file locations.  The A: indicates we are on the processor slot A:


*A:7750#bof
*A:7750>bof# primary-image cf3:\TiMOS-9.0.R11
*A:7750>bof# primary-config cf3:/myconfig.cfg

We then need to set the console speed.  SROS defaults to 115200 so let’s change it to 9600 because everybody loves that one:


*A:7750>bof# console-speed 9600


It’s also a good idea to enable persistent indexing between reboots, especially if you use SAM5620 to manage the devices (a reload is required for it to take effect):


*A:7750>bof# persist on


Finally, you may want to use the RJ45 port if you don’t have an async device available.  It doesn’t register in the Global Routing Table so any configuration here won’t impact on the operation of the router.  Lets set the speed, duplex and an address:


*A:7750>bof# address 1.2.3.4/24 active
*A:7750>bof# speed 10|100
*A:7750>bof# duplex full|half


And that’s pretty much it for the bof, just don’t forget to save your work. If you are in the bof context then it is simply save. If you are in any other context you can use /bof save where the use of / allows the subsequent command to be run from any context.  This also applies to config and admin level commands too.

Finally a word on saving in general.  If the card identifier has a * against it then configuration has not been saved since the last change.  You save the ‘running config’ by parsing admin save, again the / allows the command to be run outside its usual context.  If the * doesn’t disappear after either an admin save or bof save then you will have to parse the other save command. From the config context I will save both the running and bof configs, notice the * disappears:


*A:7750# configure
*A:7750>config# /admin save
Writing configuration to cf3:\myconfig.cfg
Saving configuration ... OK
Completed.
*A:7750>config# /bof save
Writing BOF to cf3:/bof.cfg ... OK
Completed.
A:7750>config#


So that’s it for my first post on this ALU craic.  I plan to build up a network from here on starting at the physical basics all the way up to advanced service configuration.

Happy Christmas.