[rancid] Re: Running rancid as a deamon

Chris Gauthier cgauthier at mapscu.com
Mon Nov 30 17:14:36 UTC 2009


I don't see how it is feasible to run rancid as a daemon since that is
not how is was designed.  What I mean is rancid was designed to run on a
periodic basis and it would time out during periods of no changes.
Others have gained a more "near realtime" performance by integrating
rancid with other NMS products or invoking it based on SNMP traps.  I
don't believe it is even possible to run rancid as a daemon without it
quitting in just a short amount of time.  Do you really need the
realtime changelogs?  Is your equipment really changing that often?
When was the last time cron actually failed on you?

If you are worried about cron failure, then you might consider writing a
script invoked by cron that a) 'touch /tmp/some_dummy_filename b)
executes rancid.  Next, you would have to have a daemon that checks for
the existence of the /tmp/some_dummy_filename file and also compares its
timestamp to the current time.  If it was beyond a certain age, you
could then invoke rancid again.  This daemon would ideally run as the
rancid user.

Complicated?  Yep.  Is there a simpler way?  Probably.  Am I worried
about cron failure?  No.  I have never seen cron fail because of a
problem with cron.  My cron failures have all been self-induced.

Good luck!

Chris Gauthier

-----Original Message-----
From: rancid-discuss-bounces at shrubbery.net
[mailto:rancid-discuss-bounces at shrubbery.net] On Behalf Of vishal.ud
Sent: Monday, November 30, 2009 3:50 AM
To: rancid-discuss at shrubbery.net
Subject: [rancid] Running rancid as a deamon

I was wondering if this is possible since the advantages wud be as below
1) instant notifications if changes made unlike waiting for the cron
runs
 2) eliminates the dependency on the cron if it fails to run


_______________________________________________
Rancid-discuss mailing list
Rancid-discuss at shrubbery.net
http://www.shrubbery.net/mailman/listinfo.cgi/rancid-discuss


More information about the Rancid-discuss mailing list