Mutli-tab delivery in SecureCRT

Working on my CCIE written, I have been labbing many things. One thing is constant and that is many tabs and lots of configuration. When initially configuring devices and confirm bulk checks across the many devices you don’t want to copy and paste. I have discovered a method of delivering commands simultaneously. I prefer to use SecureCRT and this is applicable to any version of it.

We need to enable the Chat Window. This resides under View > Chat Window.

Now down in the chat window at the bottom issue a right click and enable ‘Send Chat to All Tabs’. This will issue commands entered to all tabs

With the ‘Send Chat to All Tabs’ done now lets put some text in the chat window. I generally use end first to ensure we are all at the same level of prompt. It also is good because if we chose to use ‘do’ at user we will get errors. Note that shift-enter is required to add a return. Enter will commit. So time to put end  and show ip route rip in.

Okay, time to check the output.

Great, there is the output in the first tab. Time to check another tab to confirm!

Superb! It was issued the command across two tabs. This is a superb and handy way to deploy initial configurations such as generic line statements and the like. Verification is also superb when working on large topologies sich as the CCIE. Just remember to turn it off and ensure you know what mode you are in when you are working on production!