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)
Check Out this Related Man Page
rancid.conf(5) File Formats Manual rancid.conf(5)NAME
rancid.conf - rancid environment configuration file
DESCRIPTION
rancid.conf contains environment configuration information for rancid-run(1) and rancid-cvs(1), including shell PATH, list of rancid
groups, etc. It is read by several scripts at run-time and others inherit the configration from a parent process which has read it.
The syntax of rancid.conf is that of sh(1). rancid.conf is used to set environment variables used by other rancid scripts to effect their
run-time behavior or to enable them to find their resources.
VARIABLES
The following variables are used (listed alphabetically):
ACLSORT
Permits disabling of access-list sorting, which could alter statement order that had been cleverly crafted by the administrator for
optimal performance, thus making recovery and comparsion more difficult.
Default: YES
BASEDIR
BASEDIR is the directory where rancid-run's log directory, the revision control system's repository, and rancid group directories
will be placed.
Its value is configure's localstatedir and should be modified if rancid is moved to a new location in the file system without re-
installing from the distribution.
Default: /var/lib/rancid
CVSROOT
cvs(1) and rancid-cvs(1) use this environment variable to locate the CVS repository. In some cases, and for Subversion, it is used
as an argument to commands. It should not be necessary to alter it.
Default: $BASEDIR/CVS
FILTER_PWDS
Determines which passwords will be filtered from configs. The value may be "NO", "YES", or "ALL" to filter none of the passwords,
only those which are reversable or plain-text, or all (plus ssh keys, etc), respectively.
Default: YES
Note: a value of "NO" could be a security issue since diffs are sent via e-mail. A value of "ALL" is encouraged.
Note: FILTER_PWDS does not affect the handling of SNMP community strings. see NOCOMMSTR below.
Note: passwords whose value cycles and would produce erroneous diffs are always filtered (e.g.: Alteon passwords).
LIST_OF_GROUPS
Defines a list of group names of routers separated by white-space. These names become the directory names in $BASEDIR which contain
the data for that set of devices. rancid-run(1) also uses this variable to determine which device groups it should collect. Choose
these names to be descriptive of the set of devices and do not use spaces, unprintable characters, etc.
Example: LIST_OF_GROUPS="UofO USFS"
Two groups are defined; UofO (University of Oregon) and USFS (US Forest Service). Each will have a directory created (see rancid-
cvs(1)) $BASEDIR/UofO and $BASEDIR/USFS respectively, which will contain their data.
Each group must also have aliases for the administrative and diff recipients set-up in /etc/aliases. For example:
rancid-uofo: frank
rancid-admin-uofo: joe,bob
rancid-usfs: frank
rancid-admin-usfs: joe,bob
LOCKTIME
Defines the number of hours a group's lock file may age before rancid starts to complain about a hung collection. The default is 4
hours.
LOGDIR Directory where rancid-run places log files.
Default: $BASEDIR/logs
MAILDOMAIN
Define the domain part of addresses for administrative and diff e-mail. The value of this variable is simply appended to the normal
mail addresses. For example rancid-usfs@example.com, if MAILDOMAIN had been set to "@example.com".
MAILHEADERS
Define additional mail headers to be added to rancid mail, such as Precedence or X- style headers. Individual headers must be
separated by a
(new line).
Default: Precedence: bulk
Example: Precedence: bulk
X-clamation: beef cake
MAX_ROUNDS
Defines how many times rancid should retry collection of devices that fail. The minimum is 1.
Default: 4.
NOCOMMSTR
If set, rancid(1) will filter SNMP community strings from configs. Otherwise, they will be retained and may appear in clear-text in
e-mail diffs. By default, this is not set.
NOPIPE If set, rancid(1) will use temporary files to save the output from the router and then read these to build the file which will be
saved in CVS (or Subversion). Otherwise, an IPC pipe will be used. We have found that the buffering mechanisms used in perl and
expect are heinous. Using temporary files may result in a noticeable improvement in speed. By default, this is not set.
OLDTIME
Specified as a number of hours, OLDTIME defines how many hours should pass since a successful collection of a device's configuration
and when control_rancid(1) should start complaining about failures. The value should be greater than the number of hours between
rancid-run cron runs.
Default: 24
PAR_COUNT
Defines the number of rancid processes that rancid_par(1) will start simultaneously as control_rancid(1) attempts to perform
collections. Raising this value will decrease the amount of time necessary for a complete collection of a (or all) rancid groups at
the expense of system load. The default is relatively cautious. If collections are not completing quickly enough for users, use
trial and error of speed versus system load to find a suitable value.
Default: 5
PATH Is a colon separate list of directory pathnames in the the file system where rancid's sh(1) and perl(1) scripts should look for the
programs that it needs, such as telnet(1). Its value is set by configure. Should it be necessary to modify PATH, note that it must
include /usr/lib/rancid/bin.
RCSSYS Sets which revision control system is in use. Valid values are cvs for CVS or svn for Subversion.
Default: cvs
TERM Some Unix utilities require TERM, the terminal type, to be set to a sane value. Some clients, such as telnet(1) and ssh(1),
communicate this to the server (i.e.: the remote device), thus this can affect the behavior of login sessions on a device. The
default should suffice.
Default: network
TMPDIR Some Unix utilities recognize TMPDIR as a directory where temporary files can be stored. In some cases, rancid utilizes this
directory for lock files and other temporary files.
Default: /tmp
Each of these are simply environment variables. In order for them to be present in the environment of child processes, each must be
exported. See sh(1) for more information on the built-in command export.
ERRORS
rancid.conf is interpreted directly by sh(1), so its syntax follows that of the bourne shell. Errors may produce quite unexpected results.
FILES
/etc/rancid/rancid.conf
Configuration file described here.
SEE ALSO control_rancid(1), rancid(1), rancid-cvs(1), rancid-run(1)HISTORY
In RANCID releases prior to 2.3, rancid.conf was named env and located in the bin directory. This was changed to be more consistent with
common file location practices.
18 December 2007 rancid.conf(5)