Wired Intelligent Edge

I updated the firmware on my Aruba 5406R switches today and after I did that, There was an interesting side effect of that.

Last week I setup a RANCID server and I was backing up my HP switches into the new server. After the update today, RANCID was seeing that there was a config change every hour. After looking at the diffs, it was looking like there was the command being run to show the time. 

After looking at the commands that RANCID was running, the command that seemed to cause the issue was;

show tech transciever

To get the same effect in RANCID, I had to find a command that did the same thing without the time. That command was:

show interfaces transciver

I had to edit the hrancid script for HP devices to reference that command.

I can understand why they placed a show time in the first command, but it was rather maddening that I was getting e-mails every hour that something changed on my switch, which in this case it was, the time!

Not sure to follow you...what is the behavioural change you noticed on latest KB.16.05.0003?

So in the versions before KB.16.05.0003 when you run "show tech transceiver" you get the following output:

show tech transceivers
transceivers
Transceiver: 
Port # | Type      | Prod #     | Serial #         | Part #   
-------+-----------+------------+------------------+----------
A21    | SFP+SR    |     J9150A |                    | 1990-3882 
=== The command has completed successfully. ===

After installing KB.16.05.0003 when you run the same command, you get the following output:

show tech transceivers
transceivers
Transceiver: 
Port # | Type      | Prod #     | Serial #         | Part #   
-------+-----------+------------+------------------+----------
A21    | SFP+SR    |     J9150A | ZZDH2553         | 1990-3882 
show time
Thu Dec 21 14:00:55 2017
=== The command has completed successfully. ===

Both of these is output from my RANCID run.. In this case, when the show tech transceivers is run, it would also as a part of the output of that command do a show time command. In this case. RANCID would see that the output of show time had changed from the last time and then would do a "change" and I would get an e-mail that the config had changed on the switch when actually it had not. 

In this case I had to change the RANCID script to not run show tech transceivers to show interfaces transceiver to get the same output without the "scripted" show time that happens in show tech transceivers. 

Oh...that:

show time
Thu Dec 21 14:00:55 2017

is particularly strange...isn't it? isn't possible that the show tech transceiver become - on 16.05 - a sort of script which is executing a second command serially - the show time - after showing expected transceivers info? a bug?

When I went through the show tech and tabbed, it explaned the rest of the commands like this:

BES-HP-5406# show tech
 acl                   Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 all                   Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 buffers               Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 custom                Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 distributed-trunking  Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 dldp                  Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 instrumentation       Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 ip-sla                Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 ipsec                 Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 isp                   Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 macsec                Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 mesh                  Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 mstp                  Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 multicast             Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 mvrp                  Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 oobm                  Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 openflow              Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 pvlan                 Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 rapid-pvst            Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 route                 Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 security              Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 smart-link            Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 statistics            Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 transceivers          Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 tunnel                Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 tunneled-node-server  Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 vrrp                  Display output of a predefined command sequence used by technical support and command
                       status/summary in case any failure.
 <cr>

It would appear that they have re-written the predefined command sequence to add show time to every one of them. My guess would be so that if you were directed by tech support to run those commands, you are getting a recent one to send to them and not an old one.

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@bc_mmorris wrote:

It would appear that they have re-written the predefined command sequence to add show time to every one of them. My guess would be so that if you were directed by tech support to run those commands, you are getting a recent one to send to them and not an old one.

---

Yes, good guess...but, AFAIK, when a user generically runs a CLI Command its output is contestually immediate, except in special cases...and so no timestamp is provided...so my guess is that, eventually, the additional show time is there only to testify that, if Support asks a user to provide such type of detailed technical information, that output has a timestamp Support can refer to.

Interesting...and it looks like it is an undocumented change, isn't it?

Did you "solve" this wrt rancid? I'm having the same issue and don't want to be spammed with updates where the only change is the time.

For my case, I went through the  login script in /usr/local./rancid/bin. You will find a file that is hrancid. That is the script that handles HP switches. Everywhere I found Show Tech Transciever, I changed it to Show Interfaces Transceiver. You get the same output without the time tacked onto the end.

I think it needs to be changed in multiple places. 

Line 233 is a sub for Show Tech Transceiver. 

Line 473 should be changed to show interfaces transceiver

Line 550 is the show Tech tranceivers.

Just to add we have found the same behaviour on Aruba 2920 switches running WB.16.05.0004

After updating firmware Rancid was reporting a change at every poll due to the additional show time command.

It nearly feels like it may have been a missed return statement in code, as it goes straight on to show time after finishing show tech, although I doubt that is the case.

I modified rancid a different way to that discussed above. I modified hrancid and in the ShowTechTransceivers function after last if line I added an extra last if show time (see below) around line 239

	last if (/^$prompt/);
	last if (/^show time/);

 I changed it this way as I was finding on some older firmware versions it did not like the  show interfaces transceiver command

This has been udpated in rancid version 3.8.  See http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid/CHANGES:

hrancid: filter timestamp bug in show tech transceivers