Help needed with VMWare Apppliance
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Hi, I am new to the networking tracking database. It seems to me as as interesting project. Therefore I downloaded it and wanted to start configuring. But I hit a brick wall...
I always "get operation not permitted" in vi when I try to change /etc/netdb.conf
Apparently because netdbadmin is not owner of this. Changing this I can't, because... what is the superuser password (aka root aka sudo aka...)
PS:I don't use Unix often and when I do it is FreeBSD, so my Linux Skills are kinda lacking...
PPS: Is there a location where ALL the options are discussed for the devicelist.csv file? I saw some mentioning of secondary credentials. Because the only one username is impossible for us in the netdb.conf file. Depending of Switch Importance/Locations, the username/password for the switches is different. There is not one username/password for all Switches, nor would I want this... So if there is the possibility to mention a username/password for each switch? How does it work.
Thanks in advance,
Mario
Mario,
You need to sudo vi /etc/netdb.conf in that case as the netdbadmin user. You can do the same for the devicelist.csv file. I'll review the permissions on the VM and see if I can improve the default permissions for the admin user.
If you have a bunch of different credentials for different groups of switches, that gets slightly complicated. You would need a master /etc/netdb.conf file, and then multiple netdb-group.conf files that contains the different credentials for each group but the same database credentials in each config file.
Then you should create a shell script that would update your network one group at a time and import the data in to the database. For example, this would be for three groups each with their own config file and list of devices.
!/bin/sh
netdbctl -conf /etc/netdb-group1.conf -df /opt/netdb/data/devicelist-group1.csv -a -m -ud
netdbctl -conf /etc/netdb-group2.conf -df /opt/netdb/data/devicelist-group2.csv -a -m -ud
netdbctl -conf /etc/netdb-group3.conf -df /opt/netdb/data/devicelist-group3.csv -a -m -ud
Then edit the /etc/crontab, comment out the normal update routine that updates every 15min and run your shell script instead.
I know that's a little complicated but that's the only way to deal with more than two sets of credentials right now.
Jonathan
OK, I got past the sudo problem...
I am a bit embarresed though. I thought I tried all the passwords with su, sudo or root. But apparently I didn't because sudo just worked with adminchangeme... Sorry for the stupid question.
Next, I will try your idea later, which seems clear enough, I hope.
Will keep you posted, had a lot of questions, but I will get my answers by simply trying it tomorrow ...
Still one BIG question. Is it possible to see for a given mac address not only it's current location, but also it's locations on switches in the past it's different IP'addresses and even when it had a namechange.
This would be very handy for history statistics, (our server team likes to change roles/names of servers without telling us...)
Thx for the help so far.
Last edit: Mario Oosters 2013-03-06
WOOW! Your VMWARE Appliance works much better then I expected. It worked from the first try. I still need to do stuff but for a first try with this project, VERY GOOD.
Still... I might have found a bug/problem I think.
We use lots and lots of Cisco VoIP telephones with pc's/thinclients behind it. These devices (PC/Telephones) are now placed in the same VLAN (Voice VLAN). I think you base the assignment of the vlan on the intstatus.txt file? If so then I can explain the problem. Each telephone (Voice VLAN)has a pc or thinclient connected on it (Data VLAN). This gives 2 Mac Addresses: 1 in the Voice VLAN and 1 in the Data VLAN, although this is not defined as a trunk it is a special kind of trunk (also referred as a babytrunk). It might be a bit difficult to change this, as I think you miss an essential piece of info (VLAN) in the mactable.txt file compared to the show mac address-table out of a Cisco Switch.
PS: The commands on a Cisco Scwitch that do this.
interface FastEthernet0/1
switchport mode access
switchport voice vlan 101
switchport access vlan 201
Thx in advance.
Mario,
First of all I'm glad to hear most things are working out of the box, I don't always get a lot of feedback so good to know.
As for the voice vlan, it is an issue I'm aware of and would like to fix. Essentially I need to record the voice vlan separately for each port and map mac addresses to either the data or the voice vlan while also displaying both vlans. There's a number of issues to consider and I've never come up with a solution I was happy with, so I haven't resolved it yet. I will put it on my list of changes for the next version though and see if I can some up with a solution I'm happy with.
Other than that, I hope this helps with the management of your network. Let me know if anything else comes up.