Inactive status in CatOS switches

Question: I connect a server to my old Cisco 5000 (CatOS) switch, when I enable the port it goes to "inactive" mode. I checked the cable and changed the port but it did not help. Is there something wrong with the server NIC?

Answer:

When you see a port in ‘Inactive’ status in a switch running CatOS it is very likely that you have VLAN problems. For instance, if you put a port in VLAN X and that VLAN X is not defined in the switch then the port will go to inactive status.

In order to resolve the issue, first make sure that the VLAN to which the inactive port is assigned to exists or not (mostly not); do this by issuing the following command:

sh vlan

You probably do not see the VLAN in the list, if you want to create the VLAN:

First make sure that the switch is in one of the VTP transparent or server modes,

show vtp domain

Look at the phrase under Local Mode to see in which mode the switch operates.

(For IOS:

show vtp status

Look at the VTP Operating Mode in the out put of the above command to see the VTP mode.)

If your switch is in VTP client mode you should create the VLAN in the VTP domain server switch.

To create the vlan use the following command:

set vlan vlan-number name vlan-name

Monitoring and troubleshooting an interface in CATOS

For CatOS, the show mac command displays the MAC counters for traffic passing through each port such as, received frames, transmit frames, out-lost, in-lost, etc. (This command does not list the MAC addresses learned on a port by the bridging software. Use the command show cam dynamic for that information.)

For Cisco IOS, the show interfaces card-type x/y counters command is similar to show mac for CatOS platforms. show counters mod/port is also useful.

Power Supply Monitoring

The most useful command to see if power supply(s) in a Cisco switch is/are working properly is:

show environment power

However this command will fail in some CATOS versions, in this case you can use:
show systemto see if PSU(s) is/are in a proper working condition

Introduction

I am Babak Dorrani, I am a Cisco network engineer working in an International company in the Netherlands.
While I was living in my home country, Iran, I was also involved in Cisco networking and mostly in teaching some Cisco courses. Fortunately my old students have not forgotten me yet and they still send me their problems and questions and I am more than happy to help them out (if I can!).

After about two years being away, I decided to put these questions and answers, which are now quite a lot, here in this blog mainly to share them with others and discuss about them.

In most of the cases the questions are in Farsi language so I do not mention the exact question here to make it a bit more useful for my international friends. From now on I will try to translate the questions but for the previous ones No Way!!

And one last thing, please correct me and let me know in case you find any mistakes in my writings.
Good Luck!
Babak