rancid in a push configuration?

[ABochannek at yipes.com]

John,

I understand that this isn't what Rancid wasn't meant to do, but you can't
blame David or myself for trying ;-)

Can you offer a more specific pointer to the IETF work you referred to? Are
you talking about draft-ops-operator-req-mgmt-00.txt?

Thanks.

Alex Bochannek 
Senior Unix/Network Engineer 
Yipes ... that's fast! 
(415) 901-2000 
(415) 901-2090 (direct) 
www.yipes.com
 

 -----Original Message-----
From: 	john heasley [mailto:heas at shrubbery.net] 
Sent:	Monday, July 30, 2001 11:55 AM
To:	Alex Bochannek
Cc:	dbt at meat.net; rancid-discuss at shrubbery.net
Subject:	Re: rancid in a push configuration?

this is not what rancid was intended for.  i am not saying that this
functionality is not useful ... or not _required_ for sane config
management!

i believe that rancid is a configuration monitoring tool primarily and
second a disaster recovery tool.  that is, a baked config in the repository
can be loaded (for exmaple, h/w-replacement -- after replacing passwords,
etc) for fast recovery.

writing a parser to determine changes, or rather commands necessary to
apply those changes, is not only difficult, but a rapidly moving target.
to this, i note the paramount importance of the IETD ops-nm WG draft
(refer to internet drafts at www.ietf.org).

configuration generation, loading, and change-application is best suited
for a second tool (or suite of) with rancid integrated.  where most
information is stored in a database (which *any* complimentary tool can
also utilize) and canonical configs are generated from this and templates
(for multiple router/switch platforms).

i have written such a tool for my employer, but can not release it.  i
have started a tool for free release ("pita" [because it is]) which i hope
to mangle into a config generator (loader, etc), config monitoring (via
rancid), NMS, and some other useful bits.  making slow progress....

Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 11:32:01AM -0700, ABochannek at yipes.com:
> I'd like to second this request. In fact, I meant to send in a request
like
> this today myself.
> 
> Alex Bochannek 
> Senior Unix/Network Engineer 
> Yipes ... that's fast! 
> (415) 901-2000 
> (415) 901-2090 (direct) 
> www.yipes.com
>  
> 
>  -----Original Message-----
> From: 	David Terrell [mailto:dbt at meat.net] 
> Sent:	Monday, July 30, 2001 10:57 AM
> To:	rancid-discuss at shrubbery.net
> Subject:	rancid in a push configuration?
> 
> Anybody ever used rancid or a similar tool in a push configuration?  i.e.
> make changes to the cvs repository and rancid updates the router with
> that instead of vice versa.
> 
> We'd like to have useful committer names and commit logs...
> 
> -- 
> David Terrell            | "If NNTP had a protocol extension for
> dbt at meat.net             | administering a spanking (long overdue if
> Nebcorp Prime Minister   | you ask me), you'd be yelping right now."
> http://wwn.nebcorp.com/  |  - Miguel Cruz