automating non-config actions?

[Avram Dorfman]

Has anyone thought about modifying rancid to make it a batch utility for executing arbitrary actions on lots of routers?

I'd like to be able to write simple expect scripts to accomplish a task, like "show route" or "clear route forwarding-table x/y x.x.x.x" and then roll it out to a whole list of routers. 

The main difference I'm looking for is 

   - a switch to turn off all the diffing and cvs
   - direct the logging to somewhere besides the config directory
   - specify the action script on the command line.

This way, I could leverage all of rancid's router.db and vendor specific login knowledge, to get a more general utility.

In particular, what I really want to do is build a script to *install* a batch of configs from the archive on a series of routers. I would use this in a lab environment to quickly restore a bunch of routers to arbitrary past lab scenarios that people have built. I would also then use it to run tests & show commands against the scenario, and store them for later reference.

I'm getting ready to hack this up myself. But if anyone is has done something like this already, perhaps I can leverage your work. Either way, I'd like to know how many people are interested in this capability, so I can decide to what extent it's worth the effort of doing it professionally from the get-go, instead of quick-and-dirty.

-Avram