NAME¶
lg_intro - introduction to the looking glass
INTRODUCTION¶
The
looking glass offers a web based interface to routers to users
without their needing permission to login to the router. This may be a perfect
interface for customer support or less savvy folks, and many ISPs have given
public access to such an interface as a "route server."
DESCRIPTION¶
The looking glass consists of two CGI
perl(1) scripts,
lg.cgi and
lgform.cgi, and the
lg.conf(5) configuration file.
Both of these scripts begin with reading the configuration file. If there is an
error in the file's syntax or if the file can not be found, error messages
will be displayed on standard-error. The Apache http server redirects
standard-error to its error log file by default.
lgform.cgi displays a html form consisting of a list of possible router commands
that can be run and a scrolling list of routers that these commands may be run
on. When the form is submitted, lg.cgi is run.
lg.cgi begins by performing some basic checks on the arguments passed to it. If
these checks pass, lg.cgi either displays cached data from a previous
invocation, if that data exists and is within the cache interval, or uses
clogin(1) to login to the device and execute the command. The results
of the command are cached if applicable and displayed for the user.
GETTING STARTED¶
Besides
lg.conf(5), additional instructions for setting up the looking
glass can be found in the README file under
/var/lib/rancid/README.lg.
Note that the looking glass scripts require a few perl modules not included with
rancid. Rancid's configure process does not check for these. See the README
file.
SEE ALSO¶
cloginrc(5),
clogin(1),
lg.conf(5)
HISTORY¶
Rancid's looking glass is based on Ed Kern's (included by permission, thanks
Ed!), which could once be found on
http://nitrous.digex.net/ but has
apparently been removed. Support for Juniper and Foundry devices, use of
rancid's device login scripts, and additional commands and checks have been
added to the original.