[rancid] rancid access via console server

[Jon Lewis]

Yeah...there are a few monkey wrenches to watch out for.  I ended up just 
writing an expect script (well...editing an autoexpect created script) to 
do what I needed.  The fact that the device may already be "logged into" 
on the console port was something that occurred to me while working on the 
script, and wasn't too difficult to cope with based on the "prompt" being 
different if you're presented with a login prompt vs a CLI prompt.  Our 
console servers will allow "multi-use", but that's not a huge issue for 
the immediate purpose (which is just validating the console cabling for a 
newly deployed console and set of network gear).

On Thu, 10 Feb 2022, Craig Hopkins wrote:

> I'm intrigued how this would work. A console port doesn't have to be logged off so the expect script would fail. Also, if someone else were using the console port at the same
> time then you'd just end up typing over each other. 
> 
> On Thu, 10 Feb 2022, 13:42 Jon Lewis, <jlewis at lewis.org> wrote:
>       I have a use case where it'd be nice if we could use clogin to access
>       switches via their console ports via an out of band access console server
>       (that allows authenticated access to its serial ports via ssh mapping TCP
>       ports to serial ports).  I thought I recalled this having come up on the
>       list in the past, but AFAICT, it doesn't seem to have made it into rancid
>       as a feature [yet?].  Is that correct, or am I missing something in the
>       docs?

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