How to Install RANCID on Manjaro

RANCID (Really Awesome New Cisco confIg Differ) is a powerful tool that is used to manage multiple network devices from multiple vendors. It automates the process of storing and maintaining device configurations with the help of Git and version control.

Manjaro is an Arch-based Linux distribution. In this tutorial, we will see how we can install RANCID on Manjaro.

Prerequisites

Before installing RANCID, it is important to ensure that the following prerequisites are met:

• A Manjaro system with sudo privileges
• An active internet connection

Step 1: Install Required Packages

In order to install RANCID, we will first need to install some packages. Open your terminal and run the following command:

sudo pacman -S rancid git pcre

This will install RANCID, Git, and PCRE (Perl Compatible Regular Expressions).

Step 2: Configure Git

In order to use Git with RANCID, we need to configure it first. Run the following commands to set your name and email:

git config --global user.name "Your Name" git config --global user.email "you@example.com"

Step 3: Configure RANCID

Now that we have installed the necessary packages and configured Git, we can proceed with configuring RANCID.

1. Create the RANCID configuration file by copying the sample file:

sudo cp /usr/share/rancid/rancid.conf.sample /etc/rancid/rancid.conf

2. Edit the configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/rancid/rancid.conf

3. Uncomment the following lines by removing the '#' at the beginning:

LIST_OF_GROUPS="group1 group2"
LIST_OF_GROUPS="cisco"

4. In the LIST_OF_DEVICES section, add the IP addresses or hostnames of the devices you want RANCID to manage, separated by a space. For example:

LIST_OF_DEVICES="192.168.1.1 cisco1.example.com"

5. Set the USERNAME and PASSWORD parameters for each device:

192.168.1.1:cisco:my_password
cisco1.example.com:cisco:my_password

6. Save the configuration file by pressing Ctrl + X, then Y, then Enter.

Step 4: Initialize RANCID

Now that we have configured RANCID, we can initialize it by running the following command:

sudo /usr/lib/rancid/bin/rancid-cvs

This will create the RANCID directories and initialize the devices that we have configured.

Step 5: Verify RANCID

To verify that RANCID is working properly, we can run the following command:

sudo /usr/lib/rancid/bin/rancid-run

This will collect the configuration of the devices that we have configured and store them in the RANCID directories.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have seen how to install and configure RANCID on Manjaro. With RANCID, we can easily manage the configurations of multiple network devices from multiple vendors, automate backups, and track changes over time. RANCID is an essential tool for any network administrator.

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