Mailing List Archive

rancid access via console server
I have a use case where it'd be nice if we could use clogin to access
switches via their console ports via an out of band access console server
(that allows authenticated access to its serial ports via ssh mapping TCP
ports to serial ports). I thought I recalled this having come up on the
list in the past, but AFAICT, it doesn't seem to have made it into rancid
as a feature [yet?]. Is that correct, or am I missing something in the
docs?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route
StackPath, Sr. Neteng | therefore you are
_________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________

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Re: rancid access via console server [ In reply to ]
I'm intrigued how this would work. A console port doesn't have to be logged
off so the expect script would fail. Also, if someone else were using the
console port at the same time then you'd just end up typing over each
other.

On Thu, 10 Feb 2022, 13:42 Jon Lewis, <jlewis@lewis.org> wrote:

> I have a use case where it'd be nice if we could use clogin to access
> switches via their console ports via an out of band access console server
> (that allows authenticated access to its serial ports via ssh mapping TCP
> ports to serial ports). I thought I recalled this having come up on the
> list in the past, but AFAICT, it doesn't seem to have made it into rancid
> as a feature [yet?]. Is that correct, or am I missing something in the
> docs?
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route
> StackPath, Sr. Neteng | therefore you are
> _________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________
>
> _______________________________________________
> Rancid-discuss mailing list
> Rancid-discuss@www.shrubbery.net
> https://www.shrubbery.net/mailman/listinfo/rancid-discuss
>
Re: rancid access via console server [ In reply to ]
Yeah...there are a few monkey wrenches to watch out for. I ended up just
writing an expect script (well...editing an autoexpect created script) to
do what I needed. The fact that the device may already be "logged into"
on the console port was something that occurred to me while working on the
script, and wasn't too difficult to cope with based on the "prompt" being
different if you're presented with a login prompt vs a CLI prompt. Our
console servers will allow "multi-use", but that's not a huge issue for
the immediate purpose (which is just validating the console cabling for a
newly deployed console and set of network gear).

On Thu, 10 Feb 2022, Craig Hopkins wrote:

> I'm intrigued how this would work. A console port doesn't have to be logged off so the expect script would fail. Also, if someone else were using the console port at the same
> time then you'd just end up typing over each other. 
>
> On Thu, 10 Feb 2022, 13:42 Jon Lewis, <jlewis@lewis.org> wrote:
> I have a use case where it'd be nice if we could use clogin to access
> switches via their console ports via an out of band access console server
> (that allows authenticated access to its serial ports via ssh mapping TCP
> ports to serial ports).  I thought I recalled this having come up on the
> list in the past, but AFAICT, it doesn't seem to have made it into rancid
> as a feature [yet?].  Is that correct, or am I missing something in the
> docs?

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Jon Lewis, MCP :) | I route
StackPath, Sr. Neteng | therefore you are
_________ http://www.lewis.org/~jlewis/pgp for PGP public key_________