rancid_intro(1)                                                rancid_intro(1)



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, Hitachi, Juniper
       Routers and edge (ERX) routers, Lucent TNT, MRTd daemon, Netscalar load
       balancers, Netscreen firewalls, Procket, Redback, SMC switches, Zebra
       routing software, and the ADC-Kentrox EZ-T3 mux.

       rancid uses an expect script to login 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 or Subversion).

       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(1), rancid(1),
       rancid-run(1), rancid.conf(5), router.db(5)



                                 14 july 2009                  rancid_intro(1)
