Quick-Tip – FortiGate Alias command

Quick-Tips are short how to’s to help you out in day-to-day activities.  Usually they are quick easy commands to make your day brighter and help you finish up quicker so you can enjoy family, friends, and libations.  

Sometimes we get lazy when typing commands.  Here is a Quick-Tip on creating and using the  alias command on FortiGate firewalls.

To configure alias you will need to type:

config system alias from the cli prompt.

Once there, you can type show to list the aliases you currently have configured.  In my case there are none configured yet.

FW1 (alias) # show 
config system alias
end

As you can see above, there is no alias’ configured.

FW1 (alias) # edit grt
new entry 'grt' added

We have now named the new alias as grt  (for Get Routing Table)

Now we need to set the command that the grt alias will run when executed.

set command "get router info routing all"

Now we can either type next to add additional aliases or end if we are done.

Now we can run the show command again to list the aliases we have configured.

FW1 (grt) # show
config system alias
    edit "grt"
        set command "get router info routing all"
    next
end

To run the alias, we need to give the keyword alias followed by the alias we want to run.  In our case, we only have one configured so we will enter grt

FW1 # alias grt
Codes: K - kernel, C - connected, S - static, R - RIP, B - BGP
O - OSPF, IA - OSPF inter area
N1 - OSPF NSSA external type 1, N2 - OSPF NSSA external type 2
E1 - OSPF external type 1, E2 - OSPF external type 2
i - IS-IS, L1 - IS-IS level-1, L2 - IS-IS level-2, ia - IS-IS inter area
* - candidate default

Routing table for VRF=0
S* 0.0.0.0/0 [10/0] via 4.39.77.129, port1
[10/0] via 173.155.130.13, port2, [10/0]
C 1.1.10.0/24 is directly connected, Studios
C 4.30.17.128/26 is directly connected, port1
C 10.1.1.0/24 is directly connected, USER
C 10.1.4.0/24 is directly connected, USER-TRIAGE
C 10.1.6.0/24 is directly connected, Sales-WiFi
C 10.1.7.0/24 is directly connected, Sales-Wired
C 10.1.8.0/24 is directly connected, Producer
C 10.1.9.0/24 is directly connected, Producer-Wired

All done.

Hope this helps.