RANCID (Really Awesome New Cisco confIg Differ) is a tool used to monitor network device configurations. It can be used to backup and manage the configurations of different types of network devices. In this tutorial, we will guide you through the steps to install RANCID on nixOS Latest.
Before installing RANCID, it is important to ensure that your system is up-to-date. To do this, run the following commands:
sudo nix-channel --update
sudo nixos-rebuild switch
These commands update your nixOS repositories and rebuild your system with the latest updates.
To install RANCID on your nixOS Latest, run the following command:
sudo nix-env -i rancid
This command installs RANCID on your system.
After installing RANCID, the next step is to configure it. The RANCID configuration file is located in /etc/rancid/rancid.conf.
Open the RANCID configuration file using your preferred text editor and set the following parameters:
LIST_OF_GROUPS: define the list of groups which contain the devices to backupLIST_OF_DEVICES: define the list of devices to backupMAILTO: email address of the person who will receive the backup reportsRCSSYS: location of the RCS repository where the device configurations will be storedNow that you have configured RANCID, the next step is to start the service. Run the following command to start the RANCID service:
sudo systemctl start rancid
To verify that RANCID has been installed correctly on your system, run the following command:
sudo rancid-cvs
This should initiate a connection to the devices in the configuration file and backup their running configurations.
To automate regular backups of your network device configurations with RANCID, add the following line to your crontab file:
0 0 * * * /usr/local/bin/rancid-run
This will run the RANCID backup process every day at midnight.
Congratulations! You have successfully installed and configured RANCID on your nixOS Latest.
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