xenial (1) lg_intro.1.gz

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.

                                                   24 Jan 2001                                       lg_intro(1)