[rancid] Reverse RANCID

[heasley]

Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 12:02:29PM +0000, James Bensley:
> Hi All,
> 
> I am think about writing a web interface that uses RANCID in the
> background to make configuration changes on devices. Since RANCID has
> a bunch of scripts for various device types my thinking is a
> simple-ish web interface in which I can paste in some config and then
> use RANCID to log into the device and input the config, also though I
> can specify some commands and RANCID will run though them and capture
> output which can be passed to Bash/PERL/Python scripts to interogate
> the output and check that the BGP sessions have come back up or that
> the number of routes in a VRF is still the same etc.
> 
> The goal is: Anything I do on the CLI when making changes to devices
> can be automated.
> 
> I know I can push config using the RANCID CLI wrapper scripts but I'm
> wondering if anyone has done this before to extend RANCID to also run
> "show" style commands and interogated the output to make checks to
> valid the success of the change, and also if anyone has made a web
> interface already (other than the CVS types for RANCID's normal
> purpose of backing up rather than pushing config) ?

not quite the same, but rancid comes with a version of Ed Kern's looking
glass adapted to use rancid.  you may gain some ideas from that.