rancid_intro(1) 					      General Commands Manual						   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)