ns4
ns4 is a command line configuration management tool that runs on a Unix or Windows based operating system. It allows the automated backup of node (i.e. routers and switches) configurations to an FTP/SFTP server or local media on a daily basis to create configuration archives. It can run ad-hoc commands on multiple nodes as well as custom scripts for automating complex tasks. It uses Perl and allows you to manipulate the output of commands using regular expressions within scripts. Configuration based cartridges are used to specify new node types, allowing the user to extend its functionality in a simple and dynamic way.
| Tags | Internet Networking Monitoring Utilities Archiving |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Windows Windows Cygwin Unix |
| Implementation | Perl |
Recent releases
- 02 Jul 2009 14:02
Changes: This release only fixes a couple of minor cosmetic issues where duplicated lines were being added to outputs when routers were incorrectly terminating lines with "\r\r\n". It also fixes a minor issue with the "cdiff.nss" script where blank lines were being sent to stdout.
- 28 May 2009 13:05
Changes: A couple of minor bugs were fixed. Dynamic transformations within the configuration file were introduced, which allow you to dynamically create nodes sequentially without having to include them all in the configuration file. A Context-Aware Cisco Configuration Diff script was also introduced (cdiff.nss), which allows context to be maintained when looking at config diffs. Finally, some improvements have been made to the scripting infrastructure to provide efficiencies when troubleshooting scripts.
- 07 May 2009 14:42
Changes: This release doesn’t contain any major new features, but justifies a dot zero release because of some changes to the configuration file format. The behavior of inheritance of Transports and Alerts was changed. Originally, they were defined globally or within containers, but now they are only defined globally and you reference them using "transport" or "alert" attributes within container options. Some code optimizations were added to speed things up. Support was added for the "PID" dynamic variable, which allows people to generate unique temporary filenames.
- 01 Jan 2009 11:21
Changes: This release fixes an issue where ns4 was printing out the plaintext version of encoded strings when using the "detail" report option.
- 11 Nov 2008 11:06
Changes: This release improves support for running ns4 under Windows. To help simplify the installation under Windows, an installer has now been provided to install the necessary Cygwin runtime files on the system. There were also a couple of regression bugfixes.
