[rancid] Completely disable mail functionality in 3.14?

Jethro Binks jethro.binks at strath.ac.uk
Thu May 14 18:38:09 UTC 2026 

So rancid.types.base (from github repo) currently says:

# SMC and Dell PowerConnect N2048, 34xx (config is incomplete), 35xx (3524,
# 3524P, 3548, 3548P), N4032F, N4064, 62xxx, M6348, 64xx (6428), 7048,
# M8024(-k), and R1-2401.
smc;script;rancid -t smc
smc;login;hlogin
smc;timeout;90
smc;module;smc
smc;inloop;smc::inloop
smc;command;rancid::RunCommand;terminal datadump
smc;command;smc::ShowSys;show system
smc;command;smc::ShowVer;show version
smc;command;smc::Dir;dir
smc;command;smc::ShowVlan;show vlan
smc;command;smc::WriteTerm;show running-config

Is your device one of the listed models?  It might be poorly tested if not.  (It might be poorly tested if it is 🙂 ).

Anyway, it calls hlogin to log into the device and that was originally written for "hp" devices - but I guess it was functional enough to not need to write something specific.  But it sends "no page" (directly in the script), which I guess isn't applicable for SMC.  Google does suggest "terminal length 0" might work.   On some systems there is no way to turn off paging (no idea about yours though), and so the parsing script has to handle finding and filtering out "--- more ---" lines and similar, which can often be painful.

Smc.pm.in has several instances of: "# pager remnants like: ^H^H^H    ^H^H^H content" so I guess there is some known paging imperfection here, and it might be a code versions have made changes.

If your only problem is the directory listing changes, then simplest thing to do is to comment out the dir line:

#smc;command;smc::Dir;dir

If you want to keep all but the volatile ones, then you might look in smc.pm (or smc.pm.in if you are building from source) in sub Dir and modify it in some suitable way to match ones you don't want, maybe:

      next if (
        /^aaafile\.prv/ ||
        /^syslog\d+\.sys/
      );        

(is 'aaafile.prv' a real SMC file, or just a placeholder filename in the code?)

It's very hard to keep on top of all the slight differences that appear even between different models in the same family or different code versions for a particular one from the same vendor, let alone between all vendors and their constantly shifting names, and the maintainer of rancid can only directly test a few of them and relies on reports or patches.  Oxidized has similar issues, if their repo is anything to go by; I found the remark "I removed the "terminal datadump" from the porwerconnect.rb as these models doesn't have the command" in there at least.

A well-written script should catch when an invalid command is sent and just move on.  It should also catch valid commands for which the current user doesn't have permissions neatly too.

For debugging, I'd do something like:

env NOPIPE=YES PATH=${PATH}:/usr/local/rancid/bin rancid -t smc -d devicename

And you will get a .new and a .raw file that you can see a bit more about what's going on.

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: Andrew Weaver <aweaver at ee.net>
Sent: 14 May 2026 6:27 PM
To: Jethro Binks <jethro.binks at strath.ac.uk>
Cc: rancid-discuss at www.shrubbery.net <rancid-discuss at www.shrubbery.net>
Subject: Re: [rancid] Completely disable mail functionality in 3.14?


We use many different types.

The one I am trying to fix right now is "smc"

it doesn't seem like it sends 'term length 0' before looking at the configuration so there ends up being spaces in the configuration file in weird places as it paginates so it counts the exact same "configuration file" as having a diff in it..

It was this:

smc;script;rancid -t smc
smc;login;hlogin
smc;timeout;90
smc;module;smc
smc;inloop;smc::inloop
smc;command;rancid::RunCommand;terminal datadump
smc;command;smc::ShowSys;show system
smc;command;smc::ShowVer;show version
smc;command;smc::Dir;dir
smc;command;smc::ShowVlan;show vlan
smc;command;smc::WriteTerm;show running-config

I'm not sure what "terminal datadump" is supposed to do as that command doesn't exist on our dell switches.

So we'll end up seeing things like this in the configs and the configs are "updated" every time RANCID goes out to check the configuration file and I cannot figure out why since the configurations almost never actually change.

"!
 <return>                                                       interface vlan 1"

So I tried changing it to:

smc;script;rancid -t smc
smc;login;hlogin
smc;timeout;90
smc;module;smc
smc;inloop;smc::inloop
smc;command;rancid::RunCommand;terminal length 0
#smc;command;smc::ShowSys;show system
#smc;command;smc::ShowVer;show version
#smc;command;smc::Dir;dir
#smc;command;smc::ShowVlan;show vlan
smc;command;smc::WriteTerm;show running-config


Is there any way to log what it's actually doing when it is running like as far as the commands and the responses? I'd like to get it to stop thinking that there is a configuration change every single time rancid-run is ran.

thanks.

On 2026-05-14 05:43, Jethro Binks wrote:

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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