[rancid] Adding more commands during Rancid / Development

[Jason Biel]

----
It's an iterative process where you tweak your subs and regular
expressions until you get the output you want.

Running rancid-run repeatedly puts strain on your routers though, so use
a short cut:

jrancid -d    gives the jlogin command to use
use that and save the output to a file
use the file as input to jrancid -f

Now you can run it as many times as you like without hitting the network
----

That's what I was looking for, I glossed over that when reading around.

Appreciate the time and insight Alan.


On Wed, Sep 18, 2013 at 1:12 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon at gmail.com>wrote:

> It's an iterative process where you tweak your subs and regular
> expressions until you get the output you want.
>
> Running rancid-run repeatedly puts strain on your routers though, so use
> a short cut:
>
> jrancid -d    gives the jlogin command to use
> use that and save the output to a file
> use the file as input to jrancid -f
>
> Now you can run it as many times as you like without hitting the network
>
> As for writing subs,
>
> add the command to @commandtable with the literal command as a key and a
> suitably named sub as the value. The subs all follow this pattern:
>
>  # This routine parses "show chassis environment"
> sub ShowChassisEnvironment {
>     print STDERR "    In ShowChassisEnvironment: $_" if ($debug);
>     s/^[a-z]+@//;
>     ProcessHistory("","","","# $_");
>     while (<INPUT>) {
>         tr/\015//d;
>         last if (/^$prompt/);
>                                <= regex magic goes here
>     }
>     return(0);
> }
>
>
> For me the hard part was figuring out how ProcessHistory() works -
> specifically what the arguments do. They just mark the output off in
> section and classify chunks of output that goes together. Change values
> around and runt he code to observe what they do. It's hard to express
> briefly in English so I'm not gonna try ;-)
>
>
>
> On 18/09/2013 02:36, Jason Biel wrote:
> > Understood, but even when in a dev environment, what is the best way to
> > test changes to file for added commands?  For example, I want to add new
> > commands to jrancid, but I am not 100% sure on the sub routine
> > configuration for parsing output. I suppose I can make the changes, use
> > rancid-run, and just keep tweaking until the output in the configs/
> > directory is what I want
> >
> > I'm trying to mentally build out a process of adding commands for the
> > different devices we use without just shotgunning it.
> >
> >
> > On Tue, Sep 17, 2013 at 9:34 AM, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon at gmail.com
> > <mailto:alan.mckinnon at gmail.com>> wrote:
> >
> >     On 17/09/2013 13:00, Jason Biel wrote:
> >     > While I understand the basics of adding additional commands to
> RANCID,
> >     > what is the ideal way to be testing new commands as I am debugging
> >     > them?  Are most people running a dev RANCID install for testing?
> >
> >     Most definitely :-)
> >
> >     In any kind of real-life scenario, your rancid data in configs/
> >     naturally evolves into a very critical data source. Almost nothing
> else
> >     out there is capable of documenting real life systems to the extent
> >     rancid can. This is great for your ego, but also means you can't
> fiddle
> >     with it so much.
> >
> >     I keep 2 dev installs for different purposes and follow the classic
> >     dev/test/debug/deploy strategy.
> >
> >     There's a second reason why this is a good idea - it is very common
> for
> >     sysadmins to maintain their own little patchset to customize rancid
> >     behaviour (mostly to account for quirks between device models) and
> then
> >     repatch new releases if your tweaks didn't make it into the
> codebase. A
> >     dev setup makes this process so much easier.
> >
> >
> >     --
> >     --
> >     Alan McKinnon
> >     alan.mckinnon at gmail.com <mailto:alan.mckinnon at gmail.com>
> >
> >     _______________________________________________
> >     Rancid-discuss mailing list
> >     Rancid-discuss at shrubbery.net <mailto:Rancid-discuss at shrubbery.net>
> >     http://www.shrubbery.net/mailman/listinfo/rancid-discuss
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Jason
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Rancid-discuss mailing list
> > Rancid-discuss at shrubbery.net
> > http://www.shrubbery.net/mailman/listinfo/rancid-discuss
> >
>
>
> --
> Alan McKinnon
> alan.mckinnon at gmail.com
>
> _______________________________________________
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> Rancid-discuss at shrubbery.net
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>



-- 
Jason
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