1rancid_intro(1) General Commands Manual rancid_intro(1)
2
6 rancid_intro - introduction to the Really Awesome New Cisco confIg
7 Differ
8
10 rancid is really more than just a Cisco configuration differ. It
11 handles several different device's configurations; currently including
12 Alteon, Arista, Bay Networks (Nortel), Cisco, Extreme, F5 BigIP,
13 Force10, Fortinet, Foundry, HP Procurve switches, Hitachi, Juniper
14 Routers and edge (ERX) routers, Lucent TNT, MRTd daemon, Netscalar load
15 balancers, Netscreen firewalls, Procket, Redback, SMC switches, Zebra
16 routing software, and the ADC-Kentrox EZ-T3 mux.
17 rancid uses an expect script to login to each of a list of devices and
19 run a set of commands for that device-type and collects the output.
20 The output is run through some filtering to summarize, reformat, and/or
21 snip unwanted or security related data such as chassis temperature and
22 easily reverse-able passwords.
23 Named after the device's name in the group's configuration file
25 (router.db), the resulting files are saved in the directory
26 <group>/configs. Except for the data filtered from the configuration
27 file for security reasons, such as reversable passwords, these files
28 are suitable for loading directly to restore a lost configuration. See
29 rancid.conf(5) for more information on <group>s.
30 After filtering, a uni-diff (see diff(1)) of the result is produced for
32 each of the devices in a group against that of the previous run of
33 rancid and is e-mailed to that group's mail list, "rancid-<group>".
34 This e-mail will also include any differences of the device list in the
35 group's configuration file, router.db.
36 Lastly, all the updated files are checked into the revision control
38 system (CVS or Subversion).
39 Additional utilities, including a looking glass, come with rancid. See
41 rancid's share directory ( share/rancid).
42
44 Below is a sample of a uni-diff produced from the group "shrubbery" for
45 the device named dfw.shrubbery.net, which happens to be a Cisco GSR.
46 From: rancid
48 To: rancid-shrubbery@shrubbery.net
49 Subject: shrubbery router config diffs
50 Precedence: bulk
51 Index: configs/dfw.shrubbery.net
53 ===================================================================
54 retrieving revision 1.144
55 diff -u -4 -r1.144 dfw.shrubbery.net
56 @@ -57,14 +57,8 @@
57 !Slot 2/MBUS: hvers 1.1
58 !Slot 2/MBUS: software 01.36 (RAM) (ROM version is 01.33)
59 !Slot 2/MBUS: 128 Mbytes DRAM, 16384 Kbytes SDRAM
60 !
61 - !Slot 6: 1 Port Gigabit Ethernet
62 - !Slot 6/PCA: part 73-3302-03 rev C0 ver 3, serial CAB031216OL
63 - !Slot 6/PCA: hvers 1.1
64 - !Slot 6/MBUS: part 73-2146-07 rev B0 dev 0, serial CAB031112SB
65 - !Slot 6/MBUS: hvers 1.2
66 - !Slot 6/MBUS: software 01.36 (RAM) (ROM version is 01.33)
67 !Slot 7: Route Processor
68 !Slot 7/PCA: part 73-2170-03 rev B0 ver 3, serial CAB024901SI
69 !Slot 7/PCA: hvers 1.4
70 !Slot 7/MBUS: part 73-2146-06 rev A0 dev 0, serial CAB02060044
71 In this example, we see that a Gigabit Ethernet linecard was removed
73 from slot 6. However, since this data is collected from "show"
74 commands on the router, it could just as easily be that the card
75 crashed so the RP can not communicate with it to collect information.
76
78 Installation instructions are included in the distribution's top-level
79 directory in the README file (which will be installed in share/rancid).
80 Once the installation is complete, start by reading the man pages
81 listed below or follow the basic instructions included in the README
82 file.
83 See http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid for information on new versions,
85 mail lists, etc.
86
88 Follow this procedure for adding new groups:
89 o Update the LIST_OF_GROUPS variable in etc/rancid.conf (see
91 rancid.conf(5)).
92 o Run rancid-cvs(1).
94 o Update the system's mail aliases file /etc/aliases (see
96 rancid.conf(5)).
97
99 clogin(1), cloginrc(5), control_rancid(1), lg_intro(1), rancid(1),
100 rancid-run(1), rancid.conf(5), router.db(5)
101 14 july 2009 rancid_intro(1)