[rancid] duplicated characters

[Corey Edwards]

After a recent upgrade from Debian 5.0 to 6.0 I began seeing duplicate
characters in config diffs. Here's an example:

- access-list 102 deny   udp any any eq 135
+ access-list 102 denny   udp any any eq 135
- access-list  110 deny   tcp any any eq 445 log
+ access-list 110 deny   tcp any any eq 445 log

The next round of updates will revert the change back. I haven't found
any pattern to which character it will be or even which router. It's
only happening with my Cisco devices, not any of our others (Foundry
switches, Mikrotiks or Lucent TNTs). I'm using 2.3.1, but a fresh
install of 2.3.6 on the same server does the same thing. 2.3.6 on my
Ubuntu 10.04 laptop works just fine.

To verify whether the routers themselves were errant, I did a packet
capture. That confirmed that the data from the router is correct. I
turned on debugging in clogin. WriteTerm shows the duplicate characters.
So then I put in a puts in run_commands in rancid and that also showed
duplicate characters in $expect_out(buffer).

I found this thread from 2004 which hinted at it being an issue with the
telnet client. The OP eventually switched to ssh which in this case
isn't an option.

http://www.gossamer-threads.com/lists/rancid/users/720

The incessant emails are driving me batty and making the cvs history
significantly less useful. I'll debug whatever needs to be debugged but
I'm fresh out of ideas of where to look. I started looking at expect but
was quickly lost in the code.

Any ideas?

Corey