[j-nsp] How to catch invalid value/option for a command in SLAX script?

[Tore Anderson]

* Phil Shafer <phil at juniper.net>

> But the newlines are my fault.  The initial XML output for JUNOS
> generated newlines after each tag open/close/data call to ease
> debugging for developers, and also because I thought it would make
> the XML->text renderer in the CLI easier.  By the time I realized
> the latter was false, the former was shipping.  So XML output from
> JUNOS looked like:
> 
> <tag>
> data
> </tag>
> 
> which means that leading and trailing newlines are present on some
> data fields.  It's been corrected in many places, and some libraries
> have options to automatically remove them.

Ah, so you're the one to blame for the mounds of torn-out hair around my
desk... ;-)

There are more of these yet to be fixed, unfortunately. For example:

$ echo '<rpc><get-interface-information/></rpc>' | ssh -s lab-ex4200 netconf
[...]
<rpc-reply xmlns="urn:ietf:params:xml:ns:netconf:base:1.0" xmlns:junos="http://xml.juniper.net/junos/15.1R4/junos">
<interface-information xmlns="http://xml.juniper.net/junos/15.1R4/junos-interface" junos:style="normal">
<physical-interface>
<name>
ge-0/0/0
</name>
[...]

This in turn means that XPath expressions such as
«/physical-interface[name="ge-0/0/0"]» don't work, which is a _major_
pain in the arse.

http://www.juniper.net/documentation/en_US/junos15.1/topics/task/operational/netconf-operational-request-output-format.html
states that «the NETCONF server returns the information in XML-tagged
format, which is identical to the output displayed in the CLI when you
include the | display xml option after the operational mode command»,
which is simply not true. Compare with the above output:

$ ssh lab-ex4200 'show interfaces | display xml'
<rpc-reply xmlns:junos="http://xml.juniper.net/junos/15.1R4/junos">
    <interface-information xmlns="http://xml.juniper.net/junos/15.1R4/junos-interface" junos:style="normal">
        <physical-interface>
            <name>ge-0/0/0</name>
[...]

There's also something fishy going on with whitespace magically
appearing inside <junos:comment> tags. I'll demonstrate. First I add a
comment to the config:

$ cat << EOF | ssh lab-ex4200 -s netconf
> <rpc><edit-config>
> <target><candidate/></target>
> <config>
> <configuration>
> <junos:comment>/* This is a multi-line
> * comment whose lines are
> * NOT indented in any way */</junos:comment>
> <system/>
> </configuration>
> </config>
> </edit-config></rpc>
> <rpc><commit/></rpc>
> ]]>]]>
> EOF

Fetching this comment back via NetConf works as expected:

$ echo '<rpc><get-configuration/></rpc>' | ssh lab-ex4200 -s netconf
[...]
    <junos:comment>/* This is a multi-line
* comment whose lines are
* NOT indented in any way */</junos:comment>

Fetching it via CLI and «| display xml» on the other hand:

$ ssh lab-ex4200 'show configuration | display xml'
[...]
            <junos:comment>/* This is a multi-line
        * comment whose lines are
        * NOT indented in any way */</junos:comment>
^^^^^^^^ wtf?

I tried my luck with JTAC on these issues in case 2015-1202-0037 last
year, but that didn't go anywhere useful. Maybe you can open an
internal bug issue or something instead and hopefully these issues will
get fixed eventually.

Tore