The standard NIOS CLI has dig and traceroute commands, but the options are limited. In the expert mode, the standard Linux version is used and regular NIOS CLI commands, such as traceroute, are overridden by the expert mode variants.
The NIOS CLI expert mode is not a shell so it does not support certain special characters and environment variables. For example, you cannot use the quotation symbols (“”) to include spaces in arguments. You can however use \ to specify spaces. Note that the <, >, and >> redirection characters are not supported in the expert mode. In addition, characters such as &, !, *, ?, and . are not expanded or treated as arguments to commands. When you specify these characters, they will be treated as escape characters. Also, when you use the pipe symbol ( | ), ensure that you include spaces before and after and enter a command after it. The pipe symbol ( | ) can only be used for the grep and less commands. Usage of each command and its options is logged in the syslog at INFO level. We allow Ctrl-C to terminate the current command.
The following examples describe how to use spaces and special characters in the NIOS CLI expert mode:
Examples
Specifying Spaces
In Linux, you typically enter the following:
cat /etc/named.stats | grep “0 Stat”
In NIOS CLI expert mode, enter the following:
Expert Mode > show dns stats | grep 0\ Stat
Specifying Special Characters
In Linux, you typically enter the following:
tcpdump | grep -E “ARP|10.35”
In NIOS CLI expert mode, enter the following:
Expert Mode > tcpdump | grep -E ARP|10.35When you enter “named”, it is considered as \”named\” and will be not match the following pattern:
Expert Mode > ps alx | grep “named”
When you use the pipe symbol ( | ), ensure that you put spaces before and after and enter a command after it. For example, if you enter 5| (without spaces before and after), it is interpreted as 5\| and becomes an invalid option.
Expert Mode > sar 1 5| Usage: sar [ options ] [ <interval> [ <count> ] ] Options are: [ -A ] [ -b ] [ -B ] [ -C ] [ -d ] [ -h ] [ -m ] [ -p ] [ -q ] [ -r ]
[ -R ] [ -S ] [ -t ] [ -u [ ALL ] ] [ -v ] [ -V ] [ -w ] [ -W ] [ -y ] [ -I { <int> [,...] | SUM | ALL | XALL } ] [ -P { <cpu> [,...] |
ALL } ] [ -n { <keyword> [,...] | ALL } ] [ -o [ <filename> ] | -f [ <filename> ] ] [ -i <interval> ] [ -s [ <hh:mm:ss> ] ] [ -e [ <hh:mm:ss> ] ]
In addition, you will encounter a syntax error if you use the pipe symbol ( | ) without a command after it:
Expert Mode > ps alx |syntax error: require command after pipe symbol `|`
Infoblox applies certain restrictions, including the “no file” access policy, to the expert mode CLI commands. Access to the /proc and /sys filesystems is prohibited.