Remote Execution on non Linux devices

Support
1

Hello,

Is it possible to use Foreman Remote Execution tool to execute command on non-Linux devices ?

Our need is to execute commands on Cisco IOS devices…

I can see that there is a new puppet class to do so, but it seems that it is not yet integrated on Foreman.
Is there a way to do so ?

Thank you for your help.

Regards,

Thomas.

2

Hi,
Foreman Remote Execution supports only connecting over SSH or using Ansible (which is SSH-based anyway). As far as I recall, connection to cisco devices can be done only over telnet, is that correct? If that is the case, I’m afraid you’d have to look for non REX-based solution. :confused:

3

No, all cisco devices supports SSH for a long time now.

Problem is that Foreman Remote Execution is using Linux based tools (tee, rm, mkdir, etc…) which a non-existent on Cisco devices.

Regards,

Thomas

4

Ah, I see. Currently it is not possible as we use all the little unix tools a lot. We would probably need to write a new REX provider or heavily refactor the current one to allow running in such environments.

5

It would be a great Feature Request or patch. What else would you see doing from Foreman against the IOS devices?

6

Would REX with Ansible be better suited here or does it have the same issues?

1 Like
7

Good point, using ansible’s network modules[1] might be the way to go.

[1] - https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/2.6/modules/list_of_network_modules.html#ios

8

Hello all,

Indeed, we are now testing ansible plugin to see if it can do what we want.

However, REX is better integrated in Foreman than the ansible plugin (for instance, with REX we can do everything through webui where with ansible we need to create roles through CLI on the Ansible server…), so it would be a better solution for us…
The kind of things we need to achieve, in this particular case, is to modify the switch configuration on more than 100 devices.

Regards,

Thomas Castelle
Responsable de la Direction Technique des Services Opérés
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9

There’s no need to create roles, you can create a new Job Template for the Ansible provider and enter the playbook you want to run as the template. The only requirement is that the playbook has to contain hosts: all. This can be fully done through the Web UI as well.

10

Great, I did not know that !

I will test it, thanks !

Regards,

Thomas Castelle
Responsable de la Direction Technique des Services Opérés
Direction des Opérations

T : +33 4 26 20 76 23 ― M : +33 6 27 27 28 57
Standard : +33 8 20 56 39 27 ― Fax : +33 4 72 43 00 67

Exaprobe
Agence de Lyon : 13 B avenue Albert Einstein - CS90217 - 69623 Villeurbanne Cedex
email : tcastelle@exaprobe.commailto:tcastelle@exaprobe.com
web : www.exaprobe.comhttp://www.exaprobe.com/ / www.econocom.comhttp://www.econocom.com/

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