[j-nsp] Config archive subtleties

[Phil Mayers]

All,

For several years, we've used "system archival configuration" in 
"on-commit" mode, to backup each commit to a separate file on an 
sftp/scp server, then check them individually into subversion.

Recently this fell apart on us, as the SSH key on the server changed and 
the archival transfers started to silently[1] fail.

While trying to write a nagios check for outstanding archive transfers, 
I then discovered that in some circumstances, the archival config will 
give up and discard a file - I had assumed it would queue them forever, 
but apparently not in some cases (e.g. 3 successive failures with bad 
username/password).

All of which has me wondering if the feature is more trouble than it's 
worth.

What do other people do? It seems like it would be a nice feature to 
preserve the commits and so forth, but if it's not robust, maybe it's 
just misleading.

Cheers,
Phil

[1] It did log en entry into /var/log/messages, but TBH JunOS logs so 
much crap there, we don't do anything with those logs...