lg_intro(1)						      General Commands Manual						       lg_intro(1)

NAME

       lg_intro - introduction to the looking glass

INTRODUCTION

       The  looking glass offers a web based interface to routers to users without their needing permission to login to the router.  This may be a
       perfect interface for customer support or less savvy folks, and many ISPs have given public  access  to	such  an  interface  as  a  "route
       server."

DESCRIPTION

       The looking glass consists of two CGI perl(1) scripts, lg.cgi and lgform.cgi, and the lg.conf(5) configuration file.

       Both  of  these	scripts  begin	with  reading the configuration file.  If there is an error in the file's syntax or if the file can not be
       found, error messages will be displayed on standard-error.  The Apache http server redirects  standard-error  to  its  error  log  file	by
       default.

       lgform.cgi displays a html form consisting of a list of possible router commands that can be run and a scrolling list of routers that these
       commands may be run on.	When the form is submitted, lg.cgi is run.

       lg.cgi begins by performing some basic checks on the arguments passed to it.  If these checks pass, lg.cgi either displays cached data from
       a  previous  invocation,  if  that  data  exists and is within the cache interval, or uses clogin(1) to login to the device and execute the
       command.  The results of the command are cached if applicable and displayed for the user.

GETTING STARTED

       Besides	lg.conf(5),  additional  instructions  for  setting  up  the  looking  glass   can   be   found   in   the   README   file   under
       /var/lib/rancid/README.lg.

       Note  that  the	looking  glass scripts require a few perl modules not included with rancid.  Rancid's configure process does not check for
       these.  See the README file.

SEE ALSO

       cloginrc(5), clogin(1), lg.conf(5)

HISTORY

       Rancid's looking glass is based on Ed Kern's (included by permission, thanks Ed!), which could once be found  on  http://nitrous.digex.net/
       but  has  apparently  been removed.  Support for Juniper and Foundry devices, use of rancid's device login scripts, and additional commands
       and checks have been added to the original.

								    24 Jan 2001 						       lg_intro(1)