Written on September 30, 2010 at 1:14 am by

Installing Rancid – Cisco confIg Differ

Filed under Networking {2 comments}




RANCID monitors a router’s (or more generally a device’s) configuration, including software and hardware (cards, serial numbers, etc) and uses CVS (Concurrent Version System) or Subversion  to maintain history of changes.

RANCID does this by the very simple process summarized here:
login to each device in the router table (router.db),
run various commands to get the information that will be saved,
cook the output; re-format, remove oscillating or incrementing data,
email any differences from the previous collection to a mail list,
and finally commit those changes to the revision control system

Here we are using two router with diff user& pass<
192.168.70.1  router_admin cisco1
192.168.70.2  router_admin1 cisco2
Install RANCID

yum install expect -y

Download & install

wget ftp://ftp.shrubbery.net/pub/rancid/rancid-2.3.4.tar.gz
tar zxvf rancid-2.3.4.tar.gz
./configure
make
make install

RANCID configuration

vi /usr/local/rancid/etc/rancid.conf
LIST_OF_GROUPS="isp"


create config file in user going to execute rancid, here you may create dedicated user for rancid. I am using nagios as its used for all other monitoring.

cp cloginrc.sample /home/nagios/.cloginrc
chmod 0600 /home/nagios/.cloginrc
chown nagios: /home/nagios/.cloginrc

Modify aliases to receive email alert, rancid will send email alert with change diff to admin emailid.

vi /etc/aliases
rancid-admin-isp:               dhaval@linuxreaders.com
newaliases

change permission for nagios user

chown nagios: /usr/local/rancid/var/ -R

Run following commands as rancid user (here nagios)

su nagios

only for the new installation / first time, to create cvs repo.

/usr/local/rancid/bin/rancid-cvs

Modify cloginrc file for specific router user & pass, here you can defile credentials for every router.

vi ~/.cloginrc
add user 192.168.70.1            router_admin
add password 192.168.70.1        cisco1
add autoenable 192.168.70.1      1
 
add user 192.168.70.2        router_admin1
add password 192.168.70.2    cisco2
add autoenable 192.168.70.2  1
 
#If you are using fqdn with same user &amp; pass, following can be used.
 
add user *.ipguide.info            tux
add password *.ipguide.info        {tux}
add autoenable *.ipguide.info      1

Define router with its manufacturer & status

cat /usr/local/rancid/var/isp/router.db
192.168.70.1:cisco:up
192.168.70.2:cisco:up

# you can schedule this command to run every day / after few hours

/usr/local/rancid/bin/rancid-run

while running above command logs will be generated in /usr/local/rancid/var/logs which you can use.

If you find error in logs, you may use following command to diagnose.

/usr/local/rancid/bin/clogin 192.168.70.1

Install ViewVC

Dependency

yum install rcs -y

download

extract package e.g viewvc-1.2-dev-20100901.tar.gz
tar zxvf viewvc-1.2-dev-20100901.tar.gz
cd viewvc-1.2-dev-20100901
./viewvc-install
#use default path
cp /usr/local/viewvc-1.2-dev/bin/cgi/viewvc.cgi /var/www/cgi-bin/
chown apache: /var/www/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi
 
vi /usr/local/viewvc-1.2-dev/viewvc.conf
##below [general]
cvs_roots = cvsroot: /usr/local/rancid/var/CVS,

now you’ll be able to access from http://x.x.x.x/cgi-bin/viewvc.cgi


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  • Flo

    Thanks for this easy HOW TO :) Yet I get this error message when I try to go to the isp folder with ViewVC : An Exception Has Occurred Python Traceback Traceback (most recent call last): File “/usr/local/viewvc-1.1.20/lib/viewvc.py”, line 4827, in main request.run_viewvc() File “/usr/local/viewvc-1.1.20/lib/viewvc.py”, line 402, in run_viewvc self.view_func(self) File “/usr/local/viewvc-1.1.20/lib/viewvc.py”, line 2265, in view_directory file_data, options) File “/usr/local/viewvc-1.1.20/lib/vclib/ccvs/bincvs.py”, line 266, in dirlogs alltags = _get_logs(self, path_parts, entries_to_fetch, rev, subdirs) File “/usr/local/viewvc-1.1.20/lib/vclib/ccvs/bincvs.py”, line 1025, in _get_logs % file.path) Error: Rlog output ended early. Expected RCS file “/usr/local/rancid/var/CVS/mermoz/router.db,v” However I checked, the file router.db,v is right where it should be :/

    • dpthakar

      try yum install rcs -y

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