srancid1

Usage

Overview

rancid is a collection of perl(1) scripts which use the login scripts (see clogin(1)) to login to a device, execute commands to display the configuration, etc, then filters the output for formatting, security, and so forth. rancid's product is a file with the name of it's last argument plus the suffix .new. For example, hostname.new.

rancid is a perl(1) script that operates much like the vendor-specific rancid script of pre-3.0 releases, but is generic and will eventually obsolete the vendor-specific rancid scripts. It uses the device_type specified with the -t option to look-up a device description (see rancid.types.conf(5)) that defines what it does to collect and process device information.

There are scripts complementary to rancid for other platforms and/or manufacturers that are supported by rancid(1). Briefly, these are:

agmrancid

Cisco Anomaly Guard Module (AGM)

arancid

Alteon WebOS switches

arrancid

Arista Networks devices

brancid

Bay Networks (nortel)

cat5rancid

Cisco catalyst switches

cssrancid

Cisco content services switches

erancid

ADC-kentrox EZ-T3 mux

f10rancid

Force10

f5rancid

F5 BigIPs

fnrancid

Fortinet Firewalls

rancid

The generic rancid script; supporting Allied Telesis AW+ devices, Arbor Networks Appliances, Ciena Waverserver, Cisco IOS, Cisco IOS-XR, Cisco NX-OS, Cisco WLC, (some) Dell switches, Extreme switches, Foundry (aka some Brocade) devices, Juniper JUNOS, Nokia (Alcatel-Lucent) SR OS, and UBNT Edgemax and EdgeRouter. It uses the device O/S modules for parsing routines as determined by the rancid.types.conf(5) file(s). Also see rancid(3) for details.

hrancid

HP Procurve Switches

htranicd

Hitachi Routers

jerancid

Juniper Networks E-series

mrancid

MRTd

mtrancid

Mikrotik routesrs

nrancid

Netscreen firewalls

nsrancid

Netscaler

prancid

Procket Networks

rivrancid

Riverstone

rrancid

Redback

srancid

SMC switch (some Dell OEMs)

trancid

Netopia sDSL/T1 routers

xirancid

Xirrus arrays

zrancid

Zebra routing software

The command-line options are as follows:

-C

Prints the login command that would be used to collect data from the device.

-V

Prints package name and version strings.

-d

Display debugging information.

-h

Display a usage line and exit.

-l

Display somewhat less debugging information.

-t

Device type, of the given host or file, that is defined in rancid.types.base or rancid.types.conf .

-f

rancid should interpret the next argument as a filename which contains the output it would normally collect from the device ( hostname ) with clogin(1).

Caveats

Cisco IOS offers a DHCP server that maintains a text database which can be stored remotely or on local storage. If stored locally, the file changes constantly and causes constant diffs from rancid. If this file's name ('ip dhcp database') matches the regex dhcp_[^[:space:].].txt, it will be filtered.

For Catalyst switches running CatOS, type cat5, the prompt must end with '>'. clogin(1) looks for '>' to determine when a login is successful. For example:

cat5k>
cat5k> enable
Password: 
cat5k> (enable) 

rancid works on Cisco Catalyst 1900 series switches that are running Enterprise Edition software. This software provides a menu at connection time that allows a command line interface to be used by entering 'K' at the prompt.