rancid_intro(7)        Miscellaneous Information Manual        rancid_intro(7)

NAME

       rancid_intro  -  introduction  to  the  Really Awesome New Cisco confIg
       Differ

INTRODUCTION

       rancid is really more than  just  a  Cisco  configuration  differ.   It
       handles  several different device's configurations; currently including
       Alteon, Arista,  Bay  Networks  (Nortel),  Cisco,  Extreme,  F5  BigIP,
       Force10,  Fortinet, Foundry, HP Procurve switches, Hauwei VRP, Hitachi,
       Juniper Routers and edge (ERX) routers, MRTd daemon, Microtik  routers,
       Netscaler  load  balancers, Netscreen firewalls, Redback, SMC switches,
       Xirrus arrays, Zebra routing software, and the ADC-Kentrox EZ-T3 mux.

       rancid uses an expect script to login using ssh, telnet, or rsh to each
       of a list of devices and run a set of commands for that device-type and
       collects the output.  The output  is  run  through  some  filtering  to
       summarize, reformat, and/or snip unwanted or security related data such
       as chassis temperature and easily reverse-able passwords.

       Named after  the  device's  name  in  the  group's  configuration  file
       (router.db),   the   resulting   files   are  saved  in  the  directory
       <group>/configs.  Except for the data filtered from  the  configuration
       file  for  security  reasons, such as reversable passwords, these files
       are suitable for loading directly to restore a lost configuration.  See
       rancid.conf(5) for more information on <group>s.

       After filtering, a uni-diff (see diff(1)) of the result is produced for
       each of the devices in a group against that  of  the  previous  run  of
       rancid  and  is  e-mailed  to that group's mail list, "rancid-<group>".
       This e-mail will also include any differences of the device list in the
       group's configuration file, router.db.

       Lastly,  all  the  updated  files are checked into the revision control
       system (CVS, Subversion, or git).  And, administrative  messages,  such
       as  collections that are failing for longer than OLDTIME, are mailed to
       "rancid-admin-<group>".

       Additional utilities, including a looking glass, come with rancid.  See
       rancid's share directory ( share/rancid).

EXAMPLE E-MAIL

       Below is a sample of a uni-diff produced from the group "shrubbery" for
       the device named dfw.shrubbery.net, which happens to be a Cisco GSR.

       From: rancid
       To: rancid-shrubbery@shrubbery.net
       Subject: shrubbery router config diffs
       Precedence: bulk

       Index: configs/dfw.shrubbery.net
       ===================================================================
       retrieving revision 1.144
       diff -u -4 -r1.144 dfw.shrubbery.net
       @@ -57,14 +57,8 @@
         !Slot 2/MBUS: hvers 1.1
         !Slot 2/MBUS: software 01.36 (RAM) (ROM version is 01.33)
         !Slot 2/MBUS: 128 Mbytes DRAM, 16384 Kbytes SDRAM
         !
       - !Slot 6: 1 Port Gigabit Ethernet
       - !Slot 6/PCA: part 73-3302-03 rev C0 ver 3, serial CAB031216OL
       - !Slot 6/PCA: hvers 1.1
       - !Slot 6/MBUS: part 73-2146-07 rev B0 dev 0, serial CAB031112SB
       - !Slot 6/MBUS: hvers 1.2
       - !Slot 6/MBUS: software 01.36 (RAM) (ROM version is 01.33)
         !Slot 7: Route Processor
         !Slot 7/PCA: part 73-2170-03 rev B0 ver 3, serial CAB024901SI
         !Slot 7/PCA: hvers 1.4
         !Slot 7/MBUS: part 73-2146-06 rev A0 dev 0, serial CAB02060044

       In this example, we see that a Gigabit Ethernet  linecard  was  removed
       from  slot  6.   However,  since  this  data  is  collected from "show"
       commands on the router, it could  just  as  easily  be  that  the  card
       crashed so the RP can not communicate with it to collect information.

GETTING STARTED

       Installation  instructions are included in the distribution's top-level
       directory in the README file (which will be installed in share/rancid).
       Once  the  installation  is  complete,  start  by reading the man pages
       listed below or follow the basic instructions included  in  the  README
       file.

       See  http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid  for  information on new versions,
       mail lists, etc.

ADDING NEW GROUPS

       Follow this procedure for adding new groups:

       o      Update  the  LIST_OF_GROUPS  variable  in  etc/rancid.conf  (see
              rancid.conf(5)).

       o      Run rancid-cvs(1).

       o      Update   the   system's  mail  aliases  file  /etc/aliases  (see
              rancid.conf(5)).

SEE ALSO

       clogin(1),  cloginrc(5),  control_rancid(1),  lg_intro(7),   rancid(1),
       rancid-run(1), rancid.conf(5), router.db(5)



                                 12 July 2019                  rancid_intro(7)