rancid-run(1)

💖 rancid-run — the manual page, but make it cute 💖

okay bestie, welcome to rancid-run(1) from the General Commands Manual section, and honestly? she's a baddie. let's get into it.

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✨ NAME ✨

rancid-run — run rancid for each of the groups 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

rancid-run [-V]
[-c commit_msg] [-f rancid.conf] [-m mail_rcpt] [-r device_name] [group
[group ...]]

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so rancid-run is a sh(1) script whose whole job is running rancid(1) for a set of rancid group(s). she's the group chat admin of rancid, fr fr 💅

here's the tea: rancid-run reads rancid.conf(5) to configure herself, then uses control_rancid(1) to run rancid(1) for each rancid group. the set of rancid groups can either come in as command-line arguments, or via the LIST_OF_GROUPS variable in rancid.conf(5) if you just... don't pass the group argument at all. no pressure. she's flexible like that. 🦋

a lock file is maintained per-group to prevent simultaneous runs for a given group by rancid-run(1). the lock file gets named .<group>.run.lock and lives in /var/lib/rancid. yes, the leading dot is doing its little hidden-file thing, iconic behavior. ✨

a log file is produced under $LOGDIR/logs for each rancid group processed. the file name is <group>.YYYYMMDD.HHMMSS (that's year month day . hour minute second, in case you were squinting 👀).

rancid-run is normally used to run rancid from cron(8). for example:

0 * * * *      /usr/local/rancid/bin/rancid-run

the command-line options are as follows:

• -V — prints package name and version strings. that's it, that's the whole vibe check. 💫
• -c commit_msg — specify an alternative SCM commit message.
• -f rancid.conf — specify an alternate configuration file.
• -m mail_rcpt — specify the recipient of diff mail, which is normally rancid-<group>. the argument may be a single address, multiple comma separated addresses, or -m may be specified multiple times. stack 'em, queen. 👑
• -r device_name — run rancid for a single device, device_name. device_name should be name, as it appears in a group's router.db. the device must be marked "up". if a group is not specified on the command-line, rancid will be run against any group in which the device_name appears.

the -r option alters the subject line of the diff mail. it will begin with <group name>/<device name> rather than just the group name alone. main character energy in the subject line, honestly. 🎀

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✨ ENVIRONMENT ✨

rancid-run utilizes the following environment variables from rancid.conf(5). she's not nosy, she's just informed. 💅

• BASEDIR — location of group directories, etc. this is set to the "localstatedir" by the configure script at installation time.
• LIST_OF_GROUPS — list of rancid groups to collect.
• PATH — search path for utilities.
• TMPDIR — directory to hold temporary files.

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✨ ERRORS ✨

if rancid fails to run or collect a device's configuration, the particular group's log file (mentioned above 👆) should be consulted. any errors produced by the revision control system (CVS, Subversion, or git) or any of the rancid scripts should be included there, whether they be a botched cvs tree, login authentication failure, rancid configuration error, etc. she logs everything, no cap. 💀

if the log file produces no clues, the next debugging step should be to run the commands manually. for example: can the user who runs rancid login to the device with 'clogin hostname', and so on. get your hands in there, bestie, detective mode activated 🕵️

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✨ FILES ✨

• $BASEDIR/etc/rancid.conf — rancid-run configuration file.

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

control_rancid(1), rancid.conf(5), router.db(5)

go read those too, they're giving lore. 📚

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✨ CAVEATS ✨

🚨 DO NOT leave temporary files in the <group name>/configs directory, they WILL be removed by control_rancid(1). like, gone-gone. the subdirectory <group name>/configs/.old can be used for this purpose. put your lil temp files there instead, okay? 🥺

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and that's the whole page, bestie!! this version came to you courtesy of the source dated 21 July 2021 💖 stay safe out there, don't leave temp files where you shouldn't, and remember: your cron jobs could never do it like rancid-run does. periodt. 💅✨🌈