[rancid] Completely disable mail functionality in 3.14?

[Jethro Binks]

What "devices" are you backing up?  What rancid type are you using?

Many of the rancid types have an exclusion for filenames that are known to be volatile and change and filter them out from processing, or else the time fields are filtered out.

(eg in ios.pm:

sub ShowFlash {
...
        # Drop these files entirely.
        /\s+(private-multiple-fs|multiple-fs|LISP-MapCache-IPv\S+|nv_hdr)$/ &&
            Next;

)

Jethro.


.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Jethro R Binks, Network Manager,

Information Services Directorate, University Of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, number SC015263.

________________________________
From: Rancid-discuss <rancid-discuss-bounces at www.shrubbery.net> on behalf of Andrew Weaver <aweaver at ee.net>
Sent: 13 May 2026 7:55 PM
To: rancid-discuss at www.shrubbery.net <rancid-discuss at www.shrubbery.net>
Subject: Re: [rancid] Completely disable mail functionality in 3.14?


Hello,

I apologize for replying to myself but it seems like the reason it's trying to send that many emails is because it thinks that this is a change and so it's creating a diff for things like this:

38,39c38,39
< ! syslog1.sys             r-       131072      --      26-Apr-2016 15:15:24
< ! syslog2.sys             r-       131072      --      26-Apr-2016 15:15:24
---
> ! syslog1.sys             r-       131072      --      26-Apr-2016 15:26:39
> ! syslog2.sys             r-       131072      --      26-Apr-2016 15:26:39

We're solely using RANCID as a way to backup the configuration files on our devices.

Is there any way to globally disable it checking the file dates on the syslog files on network devices?

I noticed on other switches it appears to think that the wattage being used by the PSUs is a configuration change.

Do I need to make a custom version of whatever commands it's running to exclude things that change constantly?

On 2026-05-13 14:37, Andrew Weaver wrote:

Hello,

I noticed that the logs on our RANCID machine were growing quite large.

I determined that it is because it's writing 10MB of this half of the time rancid-run runs:

No configuration file found at /home/rancid/.esmtprc or /etc/esmtprc
No configuration file found at /home/rancid/.esmtprc or /etc/esmtprc
No configuration file found at /home/rancid/.esmtprc or /etc/esmtprc
No configuration file found at /home/rancid/.esmtprc or /etc/esmtprc
No configuration file found at /home/rancid/.esmtprc or /etc/esmtprc
No configuration file found at /home/rancid/.esmtprc or /etc/esmtprc

So then I created a blank .esmtprc file that caused it to start logging two lines for each thing that I don't want it doing in the first place. ;)

File /home/rancid/.esmtprc must have no more than -rwx--x--- (0710) permissions.
open: /home/rancid/.esmtprc: Success

OK fine, I fixed that.

How do I just disable every single thing to do with SMTP .esmtprc, etc?

Thank you so much if anyone can assist me.




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