The inevitable TAC call and the request for a Show Tech to help with the support. Normally this is not a big problem on most systems, but if you ever try this on somehting like a Nexus 7000 – it takes a loooooong time and pulls well over 100 megs of information in that file. Capturing this output to a terminal is a test of patience (lets not mention console), or even if you redirect it to the bootflash it can still take some time. Then, there is getting a 100+ meg file copied from the bootflash to your computer, etc etc etc. I did do a quick post some time ago about using GZip to compress the file – you can find that post here.
But that is not what this post is about, this post is about a command called TAC-PAC. TAC-PAC seems to be a little known command to most people who have never run into a problem and had to pull a show tech of a N7K, of for that matter any NX-OS platform. I was able to confirm this command on Nexus 7000, 5000, and 1000 as well as the SAN MDS.
So, what is TAC-PAC? It is a single command that redirects the output of show tech-support details to a file, and then automatically compresses it for you. One command – nice and simple. The only thing that you will still have to do is pull the file via FTP or so.