Mikrotik CRS3xx Basic Operation part 2

This post is the continuation of last week post about the basic operation of Mikrotik RouterOS on CRS3xx.

Safe Mode

There is this thing called Safe Mode. What this feature does is to prevent the remote admin from getting lock out of the system. A good use case is when configuring the device remotely. How the mode deals with the situation is it will undo what the remote admin did while in safe mode. Once this connection breaks, RouterOS will immediately undo all the changes in Safe Mode.

If you’re familiar with JunOS and VyOS, this is similar to commit confirmed command. Unlike JunOS and VyOS where you would have to commit to accept the changes, RouterOS is will accept any commands that have been entered in real-time – similar to Cisco IOS. This is where Safe Mode comes in handy.

To enter the Safe Mode, press [Ctrl] + [x]
To exit and save the changes, press [Ctrl] + [x]

You can tell if you are in the Safe Mode because the prompt will display <SAFE> at the prompt. Entering and exiting Safe Mode is shown in Figure 1.

To discard the changes done while in Safe Mode, press [Ctrl] + [d]. This will quit the SSH. The admin has to reconnect the SSH session as shown in Figure 2.

Safe Mode can keep up to 100 recent actions, so do not use Safe Mode for big changes. There is a lot more about Safe Mode than what is covered in this post. But for the most part, especially in a small environment this pretty much covers the basic use case.

Cheers!