For all you people who use RANCID, do you use some scripting magic to add new devices on your network to RANCID automagically or do you do it manually?

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"See packet, be packet, you are packet. Ignore all else!" -The Networker
packetsdropped.wordpress.com

manually, it's not yet been approved for use in the production environment.
Fed here is against open source, they'd rather pay for something then
get a quality tool such as RANCID for free.

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"If you're good at anticipating the human mind. It leaves nothing to chance."
-Jigsaw

From what I am seeing around the intertubez it looks like manual is the way. I guess the initial add is the pain and then the upkeep shouldn't be too bad.

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"See packet, be packet, you are packet. Ignore all else!" -The Networker
packetsdropped.wordpress.com

Scripted, but it's really simple since I only have to worry about a few non-cisco devices.

Can't imagine automating adding a line to a text file. Its already simple enough.

Seems the biggest hurdle I am seeing with scripting it is going to be figuring out a way to tell which vendor a device is.

Simple enough if your environment is pretty much static or of a smaller size. That is not our case here. Plus a lot of left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing situations around here.

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"See packet, be packet, you are packet. Ignore all else!" -The Networker
packetsdropped.wordpress.com

Think big.


Automated here and I wouldn't consider where I work too big either.

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- Pete

Just tell them most of the entire Internet depends on open-source, for example all the root servers.

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"It can also be argued that DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself. Life has become more complex in the overwhelming sea of information. And life, when organized into species, relies upon genes to be its memory system."

Wirerat, I like the new avatar..

issue #100

1 day, 5 hours, 53 minuets, 10 seconds before we find the fate of those who didn't go with rick to the hill top.

What scripting language do you guys find best for dealing with network equipment? For example if I wanted to throw a bunch of show-equivalent type commands from different vendors at a network device, capture the results, parse the results for certain keywords, and then add a line to a .conf file.

My "linux and scripting"-fu is very weak so the easier the scripting language is to learn the better.


Thanks! I actually haven't started reading this story arc yet. Just finished up the previous one last night.

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"See packet, be packet, you are packet. Ignore all else!" -The Networker
packetsdropped.wordpress.com

Expect would be a nice start, as it's stupid simple to start doing basic things. The downside is that when you want to do more than the very basic, you need to learn a bit of Tcl. This might be an upside if you'd like to learn Tcl for use with Cisco gear.

I usually use Perl. There's a module available for just about everything.. SSH, SNMP, BGP, ...

Python is a very popular choice as well.

There shouldn't be any shortage in introduction material for any of these options.

I've jumped on this band wagon too. The google dev channel on youtube has 6 videos which are an intro to python.

Not knowing a language at all I found the classes easy enough to follow even if I did have to rewind at times. http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL ... ature=plcp

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- Pete