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NAME

App::Netdisco::Manual::Configuration - How to Configure Netdisco

INTRODUCTION

The configuration files for Netdisco come with all options set to sensible default values, and just a few that you must initially set yourself.

However as you use the system over time, there are many situations where you might want to tune the behaviour of Netdisco, and for that we have a lot of configuration settings available.

GUIDANCE

There are two configuration files: config.yml (which lives inside Netdisco) and deployment.yml (which usually lives in ${HOME}/environments).

The config.yml file includes defaults for every setting, and should be left alone. Any time you want to set an option, use only the deployment.yml file. The two are merged when Netdisco starts, with your settings in deployment.yml overriding the defaults from config.yml.

The configuration file format for Netdisco is YAML. This is easy for humans to edit, but you should take care over whitespace and avoid TAB characters. YAML supports several data types:

  • Boolean - True/False value, using 1 and 0 or true and false respectively

  • List - Set of things using [a, b, c] on one line or - on separate lines

  • Dictionary - Key/Value pairs (like Perl Hash) using {key1: val1, key2, val2} on one line or key: value on separate lines

  • String - Quoted, just like in Perl (and essential if the item contains the colon character)

SUPPORTED SETTINGS

Essential Settings

If you followed the installation instructions, then you should have set the database connection parameters to match those of your local system. That is, the database name, host, user and pass.

General Settings

log

Value: debug|warning|error. Default: warning.

The log level used by Netdisco. It's useful to see warning messages from the backend poller, as this can highlight broken topology.

logger_format

Value: Format String. Default: '[%P] %L @%D> %m'.

Structure of the log messages. See "logger_format" in Dancer::Logger::Abstract for details.

Web Frontend

domain_suffix

Value: String. Default: None.

Set this to your local site's domain name. This is usually removed from node names in the web interface to make things more readable. Make sure to include the leading dot character.

no_auth

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Enable this to disable login authentication in the web frontend. The username will be set to guest so if you want to allow extended permissions (admin or port_control, create a dummy user with the appropriate flag in the database:

 netdisco=> insert into users (username) values ('guest');
 netdisco=> update users set port_control = true where username = 'guest';
 netdisco=> update users set admin = true where username = 'guest';

trust_remote_user

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Enable this if Netdisco is running within another web server such as Apache, and you want that server to handle user authentication. Normally the authenticated username will automatically be set in the REMOTE_USER HTTP Header. See "Running from Apache" in Dancer::Deployment for further details.

trust_x_remote_user

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Enable this if you proxy requests to Netdisco via another web server such as Apache, and you want that server to handle user authentication. You need to configure the authorized username to be passed in the X-REMOTE_USER HTTP Header. For example with Apache:

 RequestHeader unset X-REMOTE_USER
 RequestHeader set X-REMOTE_USER "%{REMOTE_USER}e" env=REMOTE_USER

path

Value: String. Default: None.

Mount point for the Netdisco web frontend. This is usually the root of the web server. Set this to the path under which all pages live, e.g. /netdisco2. As an alternative you can use the --path option to netdisco-web.

web_plugins

Value: List of Modules. Default: List of bundled App::Netdisco::Web::Plugin names.

Netdisco's plugin system allows the user more control over the user interface. Plugins can be distributed independently from Netdisco and are a better alternative to source code patches. This setting is the list of Plugins which are used in the default Netdisco distribution.

You can override this to set your own list. If you only want to add to the default list then use extra_web_plugins, which allows the Netdisco developers to update default web_plugins in a future release.

Entries in the list will by default omit the leading App::Netdisco::Web::Plugin:: from the name. To override this for one entry, prefix it with a + sign. You can also prefix with X:: to signify the alternate App::NetdiscoX::Web::Plugin:: namepsace.

extra_web_plugins

Value: List of Modules. Default: Empty List.

List of additional App::Netdisco::Web::Plugin names to load. See also the web_plugins setting.

Netdisco Core

mibhome

Value: Directory. Default: ${HOME}/netdisco-mibs.

Base directory in which to find mibdirs. This is where netdisco-deploy will drop MIB files.

mibdirs

Value: List of Directories. Default: All subdirectories of mibhome.

A list of subdirectories of mibhome from which to load MIB files. You should always include rfc. For example:

 mibdirs:
   - rfc
   - cisco
   - foundry

community

Value: List of Strings. Default: public.

A list of read-only SNMP community strings to try on each device. The working community will be cached in the database.

community_rw

Value: List of Strings. Default: private.

A list of read-write SNMP community strings to try on each device. The working community will be cached in the database.

snmpver

Value: 1|2|3. Default: 2.

Version of the SNMP protocol used when connecting to devices.

snmptimeout

Value: Number. Default: 1000000.

Micro-seconds before connection retry in SNMP::Session. 1000000 micro-seconds = 1 second.

snmpretries

Value: Number. Default: 2.

Number of times to retry connecting to a device before giving up.

discover_no

Value: List of Network Identifiers. Default: Empty List.

IP addresses in the list will not be visited during device discovery. You can include hostnames, IP addresses and subnets (IPv4 or IPv6) in the list.

discover_only

Value: List of Network Identifiers. Default: Empty List.

If present, device discovery will be limited to IP addresses matching entries in this list. You can include hostnames, IP addresses and subnets (IPv4 and IPv6).

discover_no_type

Value: List of Strings. Default: None.

Place regular expression patterns here to exclude the discovery of certain devices based on the CDP/LLDP device type information. Good for excluding a whole device class like lightweight access points or IP phones that have CDP but don't talk SNMP. For example:

 discover_no_type:
   - 'cisco\s+AIR-LAP'
   - '(?i)Cisco\s+IP\s+Phone'

macsuck_all_vlans

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Set to macsuck all VLANs, not just the ones that are being used on ports. This is a debug option. Set this if you think that the option of not macsucking VLANs that aren't in use on device ports is some how interfering.

macsuck_no_unnamed

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Set to true to skip macsuck-ing on VLANs which have no name set. This option may be useful on Cisco Catalyst family devices where ports are a member of a VLAN which is not defined in the VLAN database.

macsuck_bleed

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Set to true will let nodes accumulate on uplink ports without topology information. This is a debug option to help you figure out your topology and generally should not be set.

store_wireless_client

Value: Boolean. Default: true.

Set to false to skip the wireless client information gathering. This is captured at macsuck time, so if you aren't using the information you can skip it.

ignore_interfaces

Value: List of Strings. Default:

 ignore_interfaces:
   - 'EOBC'
   - 'unrouted VLAN'
   - 'StackPort'
   - 'Control Plane Interface'
   - 'SPAN (S|R)P Interface'
   - 'StackSub'
   - 'netflow'
   - 'Vlan\d+-mpls layer'
   - 'BRI\S+-Bearer Channel'
   - 'BRI\S+-Physical'
   - 'BRI\S+-Signalling'
   - 'Embedded-Service-Engine\d+\/\d+'
   - 'Virtual-Template\d+'
   - 'Virtual-Access\d+'
   - '(E|T)\d \d\/\d\/\d'

If present, device ports whose names match fully any of the items in this list will be ignored by the discovery process.

Note this may have side effects - connected devices and nodes on those ports will in turn also not be discovered.

ignore_private_nets

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Set to true to ignore device interfaces that are part of private nets (RFC 1918).

reverse_sysname

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Turn this on to have Netdisco do a reverse lookup of the device sysName.0 field to use as the management IP address for a device.

vlanctl

Value: Boolean. Default: true.

Set to false to prevent Netdisco from changing the default VLAN on an interface.

portctl_nophones

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Set to true to make sure an IP Phone port never can be turned off/on.

portctl_vlans

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Set to true to allow Netdisco to be able to disable VLAN trunk interfaces.

EXTREMELY VERY DANGEROUS: Turning off a VLAN trunk link could take out most of your network.

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Set to true to allow Netdisco to be able to disable Uplinks. (Router Interfaces too)

EXTREMELY VERY DANGEROUS: Turning off uplinks will take out chunks of your network.

no_port_control

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Set to true to disable globally support for Port Control. Mainly useful for development to suppress web frontend job queue callbacks.

Backend Daemon

workers

Value: Settings Tree. Default:

 workers:
   interactives: 2
   pollers: 2
   sleep_time: 2

Control the activity of the backend daemon with this configuration setting.

interactives and pollers sets how many workers are started for interactive jobs (port control) and polling jobs (discover, macsuck, arpnip) on this node, respectively. Other nodes can have different settings.

sleep_time is the number of seconds between polling the database to find new jobs. This is a balance between responsiveness and database load.

housekeeping

Value: Settings Tree. Default: None.

If set, then this node's backend daemon will schedule polling jobs (discover, macsuck, arpnip, etc) in the central database. It's fine to have multiple nodes scheduling work for redundancy (but make sure they all have good NTP).

Note that this is independent of the Pollers configured in workers. It's okay to have this node schedule housekeeping but not do any of the polling itself (pollers: 0).

Work can be scheduled using cron style notation, or a simple weekday and hour fields (which accept same types as cron notation). For example:

 housekeeping:
   discoverall:
     when: '0 9 * * *'
   arpwalk:
     when:
       min: 30
   macwalk:
     when:
       hour: '*/2'

Dancer Internal

charset

Value: String. Default: UTF-8.

See "charset-string" in Dancer::Config.

warnings

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Should warnings be considered as critical errors?

show_errors

Value: Boolean. Default: false.

Whether to show a stack trace when an error is caught in the web frontend.

logger

Value: console|file. Default: console.

Destination for log messages. Should usually be console, which does the right thing when running foreground apps, and is also captured to ${HOME}/logs when running daemonized. Only change this if you know what you're doing.

engines

Value: Settings Tree.

Useful for overriding the Template Toolkit settings, if you want.

layout

Value: String. Default: main.

Don't touch this.

plugins

Value: Settings Tree.

Useful for overriding the Database configuration, but only if you know what you're doing.

session

Value: String. Default: YAML.

How to handle web sessions. Default is to store on disk so they can be shared between multiple web server processes (although it's slower).

template

Value: String. Default: template_toolkit.

Which engine to use for templating in the web frontend. Don't touch this.

route_cache

Value: Boolean. Default: true.

Whether to build a route cache for web requests, for better performance.

appname

Value: String. Default: Netdisco.

Don't touch this.

UNSUPPORTED (SO FAR)

These settings are from Netdisco 1.x but are yet to be supported in Netdisco 2. If you really need the feature, please let the developers know.

  • admin

  • arpnip_min_age

  • arpnip_no

  • arpnip_only

  • bulkwalk_no

  • bulkwalk_off

  • bulkwalk_repeaters

  • col_xxx_show

  • discover_min_age

  • expire_devices

  • expire_nodes

  • expire_nodes_archive

  • get_community

  • macsuck_min_age

  • macsuck_no

  • macsuck_no_devicevlan

  • macsuck_no_vlan

  • macsuck_only

  • macsuck_timeout

  • nonincreasing

  • port_info

  • portctl_timeout

  • portcontrol

  • snmpforce_v1

  • snmpforce_v2

  • snmpforce_v3

  • store_modules

  • timeout

  • v3_user

  • v3_users

  • v3_users_rw

  • web_console_models

  • web_console_vendors