[c-nsp] Tracking config changes

[Mike]

Hi Gang,

    In my smallish network I am guilty sometimes of using cli to make 
cisco switch and router config changes, and sometimes I have been known 
to forget to 'wr mem' when I'm sure it's what I want. The reasons for 
this vary, but I want to be better than this disaster waiting for a 
power outage or other event to force a reset, losing something that 
could potentially be important that I may forget about later. I know 
there are approaches to this in larger envionments using config version 
control systems and such, but I think I want something simpler to at 
least notify me when/if I have a 'running config' that has been modified 
from the 'startup config' and not committed to nvram.

    One approach I might think of would be to poll the devices on my 
normal snmp schedule and include a check for the last date of 
configuration change. I could easilly throw an alert if it's been more 
than an hour since the last config change/write to memory, but I don't 
know which variables I would poll for that. A secondary idea might also 
be to download the configs and commit them to cvs anytime a change is 
detected, but some here might think this is backwards and that configs 
should only be uploaded? What do you other service provider folks do?

Mike-