Using rancid to hop from router to router

[Tony Tauber]

On Wed, 13 Oct 2004, Krzysztof Adamski wrote:

> I need to collect the config from routers that are not directly
> reachable by the host that rancid runs on. I can ssh to the first
> router, then telnet to the ones that I need the config from. Since
> my knowledge of expect and TCL is nonexistent and before I try to
> reinvent the wheel I was wondering if anybody has modified
> the clogin script to to this extra hop?
>
> K

I have a similar need.  In some cases CLI access to the routers is
only available via term server and in some cases routers beyond the
ones that are connected to the term server can be reached via telnet
or SSH from that first router.

>From reviewing the archives, some similar threads have come up over
the years related to the term server case and your case seems pretty
related.  I started hacking away but never finished.

The problem seems to me to be that the __login scripts are responsible
for the connection *and* the authentication.  Furthermore, the
hostname passed to __rancid and thus to __login is taken as the DNS
name of the thing you want to connect to.  This results in ambiguity
down the line if, say, you want to telnet to a device and then telnet
to different down-stream devices or connect via different async ports
on a term server.

I think what needs to happen is to allow an override of the
devicename/connection linkage by passing a switch with this info.
As it is, the devicename is overloaded.  Also, it'd be nice/necessary
to allow one to run the authentication bits separately from the
connection bits so one could pass different username/password for
these different devices.

That's the general idea as I see it.  If people want to discuss or try
and flesh out further the change, it'd be welcome since it does seem
to be useful functionality to add.

Tony