[f-nsp] scripting

[Bruce Rodger]

Nick,

> Second: for the times that it's just not possible, it would be *super*
> useful to be able to use ssh in the old rsh style of running a command
> against a switch without logging into it (eg using a passphrase-less
> rsa key) and without having to navigate the prompt.
> 
> With Cisco devices running IOS (or unix hosts running sshd), you can
> do things like this:
> 
> unixhost:~ > ssh user at router show ver

Check out the "flogin" command that comes with "rancid" - see
http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid/

For those who don't know, Rancid is a tool that will regularly trawl
round your network retrieving configs from routers etc, and if it
sees any changes will store them in a CVS archive, and mail the
diffs to you. It's useful to run it once a day to keep an archive
of your configs; it's sometimes even more useful to run it every half hour -
it lets you know if your colleagues are working on any router
configs!

Part of the rancid package is a collection of "expect" scripts to
remotely log into most common routers and execute a command -
"flogin" is the Foundry one. So, once set up, you could achieve
"ssh user at router show ver" on a Foundry box with:

flogin -c "show ver" router

Bruce


-- 
Bruce Rodger                      |Bruce.Rodger at strath.ac.uk
Network Manager, IT Services      |http://www.strath.ac.uk/IT/People/bruce.html
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