1rancid_intro(1) General Commands Manual rancid_intro(1)
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6 rancid_intro - introduction to the Really Awesome New Cisco confIg
7 Differ
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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, Hauwei VRP, Hitachi,
14 Juniper Routers and edge (ERX) routers, MRTd daemon, Microtik routers,
15 Netscaler load balancers, Netscreen firewalls, Redback, SMC switches,
16 Xirrus arrays, Zebra routing software, and the ADC-Kentrox EZ-T3 mux.
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18 rancid uses an expect script to login using ssh, telnet, or rsh to each
19 of a list of devices and run a set of commands for that device-type and
20 collects the output. The output is run through some filtering to
21 summarize, reformat, and/or snip unwanted or security related data such
22 as chassis temperature and easily reverse-able passwords.
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24 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.
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31 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.
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37 Lastly, all the updated files are checked into the revision control
38 system (CVS, Subversion, or git). And, administrative messages, such
39 as collections that are failing for longer than OLDTIME, are mailed to
40 "rancid-admin-<group>".
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42 Additional utilities, including a looking glass, come with rancid. See
43 rancid's share directory ( share/rancid).
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46 Below is a sample of a uni-diff produced from the group "shrubbery" for
47 the device named dfw.shrubbery.net, which happens to be a Cisco GSR.
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49 From: rancid
50 To: rancid-shrubbery@shrubbery.net
51 Subject: shrubbery router config diffs
52 Precedence: bulk
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54 Index: configs/dfw.shrubbery.net
55 ===================================================================
56 retrieving revision 1.144
57 diff -u -4 -r1.144 dfw.shrubbery.net
58 @@ -57,14 +57,8 @@
59 !Slot 2/MBUS: hvers 1.1
60 !Slot 2/MBUS: software 01.36 (RAM) (ROM version is 01.33)
61 !Slot 2/MBUS: 128 Mbytes DRAM, 16384 Kbytes SDRAM
62 !
63 - !Slot 6: 1 Port Gigabit Ethernet
64 - !Slot 6/PCA: part 73-3302-03 rev C0 ver 3, serial CAB031216OL
65 - !Slot 6/PCA: hvers 1.1
66 - !Slot 6/MBUS: part 73-2146-07 rev B0 dev 0, serial CAB031112SB
67 - !Slot 6/MBUS: hvers 1.2
68 - !Slot 6/MBUS: software 01.36 (RAM) (ROM version is 01.33)
69 !Slot 7: Route Processor
70 !Slot 7/PCA: part 73-2170-03 rev B0 ver 3, serial CAB024901SI
71 !Slot 7/PCA: hvers 1.4
72 !Slot 7/MBUS: part 73-2146-06 rev A0 dev 0, serial CAB02060044
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74 In this example, we see that a Gigabit Ethernet linecard was removed
75 from slot 6. However, since this data is collected from "show"
76 commands on the router, it could just as easily be that the card
77 crashed so the RP can not communicate with it to collect information.
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80 Installation instructions are included in the distribution's top-level
81 directory in the README file (which will be installed in share/rancid).
82 Once the installation is complete, start by reading the man pages
83 listed below or follow the basic instructions included in the README
84 file.
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86 See http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid for information on new versions,
87 mail lists, etc.
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90 Follow this procedure for adding new groups:
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92 o Update the LIST_OF_GROUPS variable in etc/rancid.conf (see
93 rancid.conf(5)).
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95 o Run rancid-cvs(1).
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97 o Update the system's mail aliases file /etc/aliases (see
98 rancid.conf(5)).
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101 clogin(1), cloginrc(5), control_rancid(1), lg_intro(1), rancid(1),
102 rancid-run(1), rancid.conf(5), router.db(5)
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106 12 July 2019 rancid_intro(1)