Auditing Cisco Switches with python, paramiko and SSH
When your datacenters and HCI offerings are top cakes in
the market it can’t just happen by doing it right but also by making sure you
have done it right. In VCE (now EMC DELL HCI) we have at the least 9+ quality
checks before the client gets it and more onsite once we do the plug and play
of the datacenter. Powershell is and was a great thing to achieve some of these
but powershell doesn’t have native ssh support and you might get away with
plink or other custom ssh modules but then again it is not as snappy and as
convenient as python with paramiko module. Python is great at configuring
stuff, validating, auditing and for many other things due to its compatibility.
Powershell is now stepping into linux but python is still a bit way ahead of
powershell when it comes to practicality and usability. I find powershell to be
easy to use due to it’s very small learning curve and how easy it is to read or
write code but python nonetheless is the top dog for now so you go with what
works the most, most of the times and at most of the places.
In my previous post we explored how to do http://ambitech.blogspot.in/2016/11/paramiko-and-ssh-via-python-2x.html
ssh to targets on windows via python through paramiko module. Please refer that
because without that it might not make much sense. Now let us take it further
by trying to get the output saved to some text file.
target = ‘1.1.1.1’
username = ‘admin’
password = ‘@dmin’
filename = target +'.commands.txt' #name of the file with commands and their output
The above defines the details of the cisco switch, for
which we want to pull the report.
Now let us create an array of commands that we want to
run against the switches. Below is a sample
commands = [ #Here we will list out all the commands that we have to run in a
cisco switch
"show feature ",
"show banner motd ",
"show run | inc route ",
"show int desc ",
"show license usage ",
"show version ",
"show inventory ",
"show vpc brief ",
"show hsrp brief ",
"show environment ",
"show port-channel summary ",
"show vlan ",
"show module ",
"show redundancy status ",
"show int counters errors ",
"show int brief ",
"show int status ",
]
Below is a method to get the complete filename
import inspect, os, sys
def
get_script_dir(follow_symlinks=True):
if getattr(sys, 'frozen', False): # py2exe, PyInstaller, cx_Freeze
path = os.path.abspath(sys.executable)
else:
path = inspect.getabsfile(get_script_dir)
if follow_symlinks:
path = os.path.realpath(path)
return os.path.dirname(path)
scriptpath = get_script_dir() #path where the script resides
filepath = "%s\%s" % (scriptpath, filename) #full path to the filename including the file itself
#print filepath
Thanks to stackoverflow, the custom function
get_script_dir is going to act as an equivalent of $psscriptroot in powershell.
If you run the whole thing with #print filepath uncommented
then you will know that it will print out the exact path to the root directory
from which you are running the script from. Now let us append the filename to
this path to get the full path to the filename and the filename itself so that
it would be easy for us to create a file to which we are going to append the
outputs of the cisco switch.
Below should be self-explanatory
import paramiko #import paramiko module
ssh = paramiko.SSHClient() #create an ssh client
open(filepath, 'w') #create
file
with open(filepath,"a") as myfile:
for command in commands:
print command
ssh.set_missing_host_key_policy(paramiko.AutoAddPolicy()) #auto accept ssh key
ssh.connect(target, port=22, username=username, password=password) #connect to the target
stdin, stdout,
stderr = ssh.exec_command(command) #execute the
command
output =
stdout.readlines() #get the output
outstore = '\n'.join(output) #format the output to print each line in a new line
print outstore #print outstore
file =
myfile.write
file('\n start of ' + command) #append the name of the command for which we have the ouput
file('\n=====================================')
file('\n')
file(outstore) #actual command’s output
file('\n')
file('\n end of ' + command)
file('\n-------------------------------------')
So now when you run this script it will generate a text
output named
Target.commands.text (where target is the address of the
switch) with the data which looks like this
start of show banner motd
=====================================
***W A R N I N G***
THIS IS A VERY PRIVATE SYSTEM.
This
system including all related equipment, network devices,
are provided only for authorized use.
All
systems will be monitored for all lawful purposes, including
those activities that are authorized for
management of the system.
All information including personal
information, stored or sent over this
system will be monitored.
Uses of this system, authorized or
unauthorized, constitutes consent to
monitoring of this system.
Unauthorized use will subject you to
criminal prosecution.
WARNING: Unauthorized access to this
system is forbidden and will be
prosecuted by law.
By accessing this system, you agree that
your actions will be monitored and batman is the best superhero out there and
the entire marvel universe is just the imagination of franklin richards.
end of show banner motd
-------------------------------------
start of show run | inc route
=====================================
ip route 0.0.0.0/0 192.188.11.11
no ip source-route
end of show run | inc route
-------------------------------------
start of show int desc
=====================================
Go get this here
