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Catalyst 3750-X and 3560-X Switch Software Configuration Guide
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Appendix B Working with the Cisco IOS File System, Configuration Files, and Software Images
Working with Configuration Files
Rolling Back a Configuration
You can also use the configure replace command to roll back changes that were made since the previous
configuration was saved. Instead of basing the rollback operation on a specific set of changes that were
applied, the configuration rollback capability reverts to a specific configuration based on a saved
configuration file.
If you want the configuration rollback capability, you must first save the running configuration before
making any configuration changes. Then, after entering configuration changes, you can use that saved
configuration file to roll back the changes by using the configure replace target-url command.
You can specify any saved configuration file as the rollback configuration. You are not limited to a fixed
number of rollbacks, as is the case in some rollback models.
Configuration Guidelines
Follow these guidelines when configuring and performing configuration replacement and rollback:
Make sure that the switch has free memory larger than the combined size of the two configuration
files (the running configuration and the saved replacement configuration). Otherwise, the
configuration replacement operation fails.
Make sure that the switch also has sufficient free memory to execute the configuration replacement
or rollback configuration commands.
Certain configuration commands, such as those pertaining to physical components of a networking
device (for example, physical interfaces), cannot be added or removed from the running
configuration.
A configuration replacement operation cannot remove the interface interface-id command line
from the running configuration if that interface is physically present on the device.
The interface interface-id command line cannot be added to the running configuration if no
such interface is physically present on the device.
When using the configure replace command, you must specify a saved configuration as the
replacement configuration file for the running configuration. The replacement file must be a
complete configuration generated by a Cisco IOS device (for example, a configuration generated by
the copy running-config destination-url command).
Note If you generate the replacement configuration file externally, it must comply with the format of files
generated by Cisco IOS devices.