[rancid] Gathering switch information via SNMP or web interfaces

[Lars Kruse]

Hello,

currently I am involved with the maintenance of a dozen switches (Netgear
GS724T, Netgear GS728TP and Netgear GS748T).
I would like to distribute notifications to our small group of administrators
after a switch configuration change was made by one of us.
As far as I understand RANCID, I assume that it could be used for this purpose.

Sadly our switches do not allow commandline access (ssh or telnet). They offer
only a web interface and SNMP.

I took a quick look at the rancid code and came to the conclusion that it uses
expect for all its operations. Thus I could imagine that it only works with
switches with commandline interfaces.

Please correct my assumptions above, if necessary.

I am prepared to write some code (extending RANCID or writing single-purpose
scripts for our environment).
But I cannot judge if it is possible (and desirable) to extend RANCID in a way
to would allow the gathering of information via SNMP or web interfaces (with all
the related complications of sessions and/or cookies).
Would someone please share some thoughts regarding this approach?

Thank you for your time!

Cheers,
Lars