The Network Documentation Tool (Netdot) is an open source software designed to help network administrators collect, organize and maintain network documentation. Netdot was developed at the University of Oregon.
In these exercises we will install Netdot and demonstrate some of its most important features.
Netdot may already be installed in your campus server. Ask the instructor.
Log in to your virtual machine as the sysadm user.
$ cd
$ git clone https://github.com/cvicente/Netdot.git
$ cd Netdot$ sudo apt install build-essential
$ sudo make apt-install
Which RDBMS do you plan to use as backend: [mysql|Pg]? mysql
We need to add a temporary repository of Netdot dependencies until all packages
are in Debian/Ubuntu official repositories.
Would you like to continue? [y/n] yThis will download a lot of packages. Be patient.
(If you had not installed mysql-server, you'll be asked for a DBA password. Ask the instructor for the Mysql root password).
Say yes to the two following questions:
We will install the MIB files now. Continue? [y/n] yA new /etc/snmp/snmp.conf needs to be installed to point to the newly
installed MIB files. The current file will be backed up. Continue? [y/n] yAt the end of the installation you will see a list of Perl modules that have been installed (OK). If any did not install you will see "MISSING".
NOTE If packages show as MISSING, do not continue. Ask your instructor for help. Probably you will need to go back and repeat the last section (
sudo make apt-install) and look for errors.
$ cp etc/Default.conf etc/Site.conf
$ editor etc/Site.confFind and change the following values:
NETDOTNAME => 'hostX.campusY.ws.nsrc.org',
DB_DBA_PASSWORD => '(the password you used when installing mysql)',
DEFAULT_SNMPCOMMUNITIES => ['NetManage', 'public'],
NMS_DEVICE => 'hostX.campusY.ws.nsrc.org',
DEFAULT_DNSDOMAIN => 'ws.nsrc.org',
DEVICE_NAMING_METHOD_ORDER => [ 'sysname', 'snmp_target' ],Save and exit from the file.
It's finally time to run the installation!
$ sudo make installdb
$ sudo make install APACHEUSER=www-data APACHEGROUP=www-data
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/netdot/etc/netdot_apache24_local.conf \
/etc/apache2/conf-available/netdot.conf
$ sudo a2enconf netdot
$ sudo systemctl restart apache2If you get an error when trying to restart apache2 see the next section to patch your Netdot installation.
Install the cron jobs for automated tasks
$ sudo cp netdot.cron /etc/cron.d/netdotWhen running on Ubuntu 16.04 or later, these patches are necessary:
https://github.com/cvicente/Netdot/issues/48#issuecomment-297634200
We provide separate files for you to download and then apply the required patches. To do this we will download the patch files in to /home/sysadm/patches.
$ cd
$ mkdir patches
$ wget http://www.ws.nsrc.org/downloads/netdot/perl.patch
$ wget http://www.ws.nsrc.org/downloads/netdot/apache2.patchNow that you have the patch files we will apply these patches to your apache2 webserver initialization script and the Perl DBI module.
$ sudo patch /etc/init.d/apache2 apache2.patch
$ sudo patch /usr/share/perl5/Class/DBI.pm perl.patchYou should now be able to start the Apache2 webserver again:
$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload
$ sudo systemctl restart apache2In your browser, go to:
http://hostX.campusY.ws.nsrc.org/netdotLog in with username: admin and password: admin
Netdot comes with three default user accounts. You should change the default passwords on those.
Go to the "Contacts" tab, then search for "Admin". You should see the details for the Admin user. Click on [edit], and find the Password field. Type the password you used to log in to your server, then click on the "Update" button.
Repeat the same steps for the other default users:
If you have not done so yet, configure SNMP on your server and your router.
Ask the instructor to provide you with instructions for configuring SNMP on Cisco routers and Linux
Now back to Netdot. Let's create a file with all the devices in the lab network that respond to SNMP:
$ editor /home/sysadm/discoverme.txtCopy and paste the list below. You will need to change "Y" to your campus number
bdr1.campusY.ws.nsrc.org
core1.campusY.ws.nsrc.org
dist1-b1.campusY.ws.nsrc.org
dist1-b2.campusY.ws.nsrc.org
host1.campusY.ws.nsrc.org
host2.campusY.ws.nsrc.org
host3.campusY.ws.nsrc.org
host4.campusY.ws.nsrc.org
host5.campusY.ws.nsrc.org
host6.campusY.ws.nsrc.org
srv1.campusY.ws.nsrc.orgNow, tell Netdot to discover those devices:
$ cd /usr/local/netdot
$ sudo bin/updatedevices.pl -E /home/sysadm/discoverme.txt -IAFWhen that is done, go to the web interface and navigate to
Management -> DevicesLeave the search box empty, and click on the "Find" button.
You should see all the discovered devices in that list. Go to the link for your group's router (e.g. rtrX.ws.nsrc.org)
Navigate to all the tabs: Basic, Interfaces, Modules, IP Info, etc. Netdot allows you to augment the information gathered from the device with details entered manually.
In the ARP section, you should see one entry with a timestamp. Click on that entry. You should see a table associating IP addresses with MAC addresses. This is the ARP table discovered from rtr1. You should see your servers's IP address and MAC address.
Netdot will show you which devices were seeing that MAC address the last time that it discovered the network.
Go to Management -> Address Space
You should see a list of IP blocks. Some of these come pre-installed in Netdot, and some (Subnets) are discovered from routers.
In the section called "Address Space Tasks" on top, click on the "[new]" button and enter the following:
You should now see the new Container page. It shows a graphical representation of the block. All the existing subnets are shown in red. The green space represents unused or available address space.
Periodically you will want to connect again to your routers and switches to fetch their interface list, ARP and forwarding tables etc. You can run the command which does this:
$ sudo /usr/local/netdot/bin/updatedevices.pl -DIFATTo avoid having to run this by hand, you can install a crontab which will do it automatically at set times of day. We installed the crontab file in /etc/cron.d previously. If you look in /etc/cron.d/netdot you will see that this command executes once each hour by default.
Patch to /etc/init.d/apache2
--- apache2.orig 2017-03-21 13:36:56.712133397 +0000
+++ apache2 2017-03-21 13:37:35.928572194 +0000
@@ -159,8 +159,12 @@
fi
if apache_conftest ; then
+ # Utterly horrible workaround for https://osl.uoregon.edu/redmine/issues/1904
+ a2disconf netdot
$APACHE2CTL start
apache_wait_start $?
+ a2enconf netdot
+ $APACHE2CTL graceful
return $?
else
APACHE2_INIT_MESSAGE="The apache2$DIR_SUFFIX configtest failed."Patch to /usr/share/perl5/Class/DBI.pm
# Needed for mysql 5.7
# https://osl.uoregon.edu/redmine/issues/1911
# Patch taken from:
# https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Bug/Display.html?id=118491
--- Class/DBI.pm.orig 2007-10-04 21:27:07.000000000 +0000
+++ Class/DBI.pm 2017-03-24 12:01:07.829877222 +0000
@@ -597,6 +597,7 @@
sub _auto_increment_value {
my $self = shift;
+ my $sth = shift;
my $dbh = $self->db_Main;
# Try to do this in a standard method. Fall back to MySQL/SQLite
@@ -607,6 +608,7 @@
my $id = $dbh->last_insert_id(undef, undef, $self->table, undef) # std
|| $dbh->{mysql_insertid} # mysql
|| eval { $dbh->func('last_insert_rowid') }
+ || $sth->{'mysql_insertid'} # Added for MySQL 5.7
or $self->_croak("Can't get last insert id");
return $id;
}
@@ -623,7 +625,7 @@
$self->_bind_param($sth, \@columns);
$sth->execute(values %$data);
my @primary_columns = $self->primary_columns;
- $data->{ $primary_columns[0] } = $self->_auto_increment_value
+ $data->{ $primary_columns[0] } = $self->_auto_increment_value($sth)
if @primary_columns == 1
&& !defined $data->{ $primary_columns[0] };
};