[rancid] How to extend Rancid. Basics.

[jm+rancid at roth.lu]

Hi there,

I wanted to extend Rancid with a script to monitor some Checkpoint Gaia 
firewalls.

What needs to be done there is login, issue a command to stop 
pagination, and then say "show configuration". That's it.

Yeah I know these devices allow a scheduled backup that I could somehow 
inject into SVN. Certainly. But that is not the question.

Now I find a myriad of scripts for other devices but which seem too 
complicated to me, since I'm not the absolute Perl guru.

Clogin works fine for the login, expect for some commands for setting up 
the terminal that it gives, which don't make sense on Checkpoint.

The question thus is: what is the absolute minimum required feature set 
of the actual script to interact with the main rancid application i.e. 
feed it the content so it is stored in SVN?

I don't want to use any advanced features. Is there a doc on all of this?
I'd love to provide "signatures" for certain devices but this somehow 
stands in my way.

I also see that there seem to be several approchaches. There are 
different xxrancid scripts in the bin directory. On the other hand, some 
devices seem to call rancid directly with the -t parameter, which seems 
to use libs from the lib directory, which looks like a more modular 
approach. What's the difference, and what is the official/recommended 
approach?

Thanks.

Marki