[rancid] Changes in "show inventory raw" every night on Cisco 6509 chassis

[john heasley]

Wed, Sep 21, 2011 at 03:55:38PM +0100, Tyler J. Wagner:
> Everyone,
> 
> I have a problem with rancid and one of my Cisco 6509 9-slot switch
> chassis. I have two of them, nearly identical. One of them behaves normally
> with rancid. On the other, the output of "show inventory raw" changes every
> night. It is usually missing, some lines one night, then has them back the
> next. So I get emails every night with:
> 
> Index: configs/switch01
> ===================================================================
> retrieving revision 1.71
> diff -u -4 -r1.71 switch01
> @@ -288,8 +288,95 @@
>   !NAME: "Gi1/35",                DESCR: "10/100/1000BaseT Gi1/35"
>   !PID: 0x
>   !VID: 0x
>   !SN: 0x
> + !NAME: "Gi1/36",                DESCR: "10/100/1000BaseT Gi1/36"
> + !PID: 0x
> + !VID: 0x
> + !SN: 0x
> + !NAME: "Gi1/37",                DESCR: "10/100/1000BaseT Gi1/37"
> + !PID: 0x
> + !VID: 0x
> + !SN: 0x
> + !NAME: "Gi1/38",                DESCR: "10/100/1000BaseT Gi1/38"
> ....
> + !NAME: "module 5 device-1 temperature Sensor", DESCR: "module 5 device-1
> temperature Sensor"
> + !NAME: "module 5 device-2 temperature Sensor", DESCR: "module 5 device-2
> temperature Sensor"
> + !NAME: "module 5 asic-1 temperature Sensor", DESCR: "module 5 asic-1
> temperature Sensor"
> + !NAME: "module 5 asic-2 temperature Sensor", DESCR: "module 5 asic-2
> temperature Sensor"
> 
> 
> The next night, the same email will have the above output with the lines
> missing (prefixed by - signs).
> 
> The problem does not seem to happen when I run this command on console. The
> output is consistent.

most likely a cvs problem; look for cvs errors in the log file for the group.
otherwise, the device might not be displaying those lines reliably, though
you see no problem in your manual test.