Using The Chat Window To Send Commands To Multiple SecureCRT® Sessions

Introduction

If you are a network administrator who manages many servers, switches, and routers, you probably issue the same commands to multiple machines regularly. SecureCRT can help you in several ways to get through this kind of time-consuming task more easily. You do this by grouping the sessions in one window and then broadcasting commands to all of them at once using the chat window.

Sending commands to a set of sessions is a multi-step process.

Organize and start sessions in groups.
Start sessions in tabbed windows or drag several sessions into the same SecureCRT window.
Use a special chat window setting to distribute one command to all the tabbed sessions in that window.

You may already have worked through Step 1 and organized your sessions into groups. Next, we will walk you through each step of the process.

Organize Sessions Into Groups

The first step is connecting the sessions that will take a common set of commands. The easiest way to connect a set of sessions all at once is to organize your sessions in folders and then connect using the Connect dialog. Simply select a folder and click on the Connect button to launch all the sessions in that folder.

An alternate method allows you to quickly group active sessions so that you can issue commands to them. If you have a subset of active sessions that you want to broadcast commands to, you can use SecureCRT draggable tabs to group them in one window.

First, choose a tab, right click on the tab and select Send to New Window. SecureCRT sends the tab to a separate window. Then you can drag as many SecureCRT session tabs as you need into the new window.

Drag tabs to place the sessions in one window

Or, if you already have a group of sessions in a tabbed SecureCRT window, you can drag off the tabs you don't want to broadcast commands to into a separate window.

Broadcast Commands Using Chat

Broadcasting commands uses the SecureCRT chat window, which appears underneath the session window. Chat allows you to type in commands that are only sent to the remote when you press the ENTER key (when not in the chat window, each character is sent to the remote as soon as you type it). You can prepare multiple lines of commands in the chat window by using the CTRL+ENTER key combination.

To open the chat window, select Chat window on the View menu. Once all your sessions are started as tabs, right-click in the chat window and choose Send Chat to All Tabs. With this option enabled, each command entered into the chat window is sent to every tab in the SecureCRT window.

You can save commands in the chat window by enabling the chat window history in the Global Options dialog. In the Terminal/Appearance category, enter into the Chat window history option the number of recently used chat window commands that you want SecureCRT to remember (to disable the chat window history, enter a zero (0) in this entry box). In your chat window, you can cycle through these commands using your UP and DOWN arrow keys.

SecureCRT chat window and "Send Chat to All Tabs" command

Note that chat is not sent to locked sessions, which makes it possible to send chat text to a subset of the tabbed sessions. Sessions can be locked from the File menu or the tab menu.

When you are done broadcasting commands, you may want to restore your session tabs or windows to their previous state. You can drag tabs between windows to do this. When the last tab is dragged into the target window, the second window disappears.

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