mmcollect

mmcollect

mmcollect is a small tool to collect the output of "show" commands from all controllers (also called MDs or Managed Devices) connected to a Mobility Manager.

The basic usage requires just the IP address (or hostname) of the Mobility Manager, an username, and the command to run:

# Will dump the "show version" command of all MDs managed by the MM
mmcollect -h your.mm.ip.address -u username "show version"

mmcollect can also collect a flash backup of your MM, using an intermediate FTP server for transferring the backup from the MM to your computer.

# Will run a "backup flash" command on the MM, upload the buckup to the FTP server, and then download it to the current folder.
# Once downloaded, the baxkup will be removed from the remote server.
mmcollect -h your.mm.ip.address -u username -backup "ftp://user:pass@host/path/filename.tar.gz"

More advanced use cases are described below.

Connecting to the MM and Controllers

mmcollect does not use a regular telnet/ssh connection to run the show commands, but the REST API of AOS 8.X. To connect to the API, the host where you run mmcollect needs connectivity to TCP PORT 4343 of the MM and controllers.

A side effect of using the API is that show commands must be typed full, with no abbreviations. I.e. show ip int brief won't work, you need to type the whole thing: show ip interface brief

Another side effect is that filters behave a little different, i.e. show ip interface brief | include vlan does not do what you would expect. Filtering should be done using jsonpath expressions, see the filtering section below for some examples.

Filtering

The output of "show" requests received through the REST API is not raw text, but json objects. You will notice if you try something like show ip access-list brief:

mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address "show ip access-list brief"
Password:

2018/05/10 19:10:06 Getting the switch list
2018/05/10 19:10:07 Switch list collected, working on a set of 2
2018/05/10 19:10:07 Waiting for workers to complete!
CONTROLLER  x.x.x.x
{
  "Access_list_table_4_IPv4_6_IPv6": [
    {
      "Name": "allow-diskservices",
      "Roles": null,
      "Type": "session(4)",
      "Use_Count": null
    },
    {
      "Name": "allow-printservices",
      "Roles": null,
      "Type": "session(4)",
      "Use_Count": null
    },
# ... omitted for brevity

You see, you get a JSON object as a reply! Notice from the example above how mmcollect replaces whitespace and other non-alphanumeric characters with underscores ('_') in attribute names, to workaround some problems when working with those attributes.

mmcollect supports jsonpath syntax to filter the values returned by the controller. Operators supported (referenced from github.com/jayway/JsonPath):

For example, say you want to collect only session access-list:

mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address "show ip access-list brief | $.Access_list_table_4_IPv4_6_IPv6[?(@.Type == 'session(4)')]"
Password:

2018/05/10 19:15:41 Getting the switch list
2018/05/10 19:15:41 Switch list collected, working on a set of 2
2018/05/10 19:15:41 Waiting for workers to complete!
CONTROLLER  x.x.x.x
{
  "Name": "allow-diskservices",
  "Roles": null,
  "Type": "session(4)",
  "Use_Count": null
}
{
  "Name": "allow-printservices",
  "Roles": null,
  "Type": "session(4)",
  "Use_Count": null
}
# ... omitted for brevity

Or you want only ACLs with the name "print" in it:

mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address "show ip access-list brief | $.Access_list_table_4_IPv4_6_IPv6[?(@.Name =~ /print/)]"
Password:

2018/05/10 19:15:41 Getting the switch list
2018/05/10 19:15:41 Switch list collected, working on a set of 2
2018/05/10 19:15:41 Waiting for workers to complete!
CONTROLLER  x.x.x.x
{
  "Name": "allow-printservices",
  "Roles": null,
  "Type": "session(4)",
  "Use_Count": null
}

Concatenating filters

You can concatenate several filters, separated by pipes. The output of one filter is fed into the next one. If the output of some filter is an array, you must skip the "$[ ]" part in the next filter. I.e. Instead of:

mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address "show ip access-list brief | $.Access_list_table_4_IPv4_6_IPv6[?(@.Type == 'session(4)')] | $[?(@.Name =~ /print/)]"

Do:

# Since the output of first filter is an array, we skip the starting "$[" and ending "]" in the second filter
mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address "show ip access-list brief | $.Access_list_table_4_IPv4_6_IPv6[?(@.Type == 'session(4)')] | ?(@.Name =~ /print/)"

You can even do:

mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address "show ip access-list brief | $.Access_list_table_4_IPv4_6_IPv6 | ?(@.Type == 'session(4)') | ?(@.Name =~ /print/)"

Plain text filters

You can also use plain old include, exclude or begin keywords to filter strings or arrays of strings. If the output of one filter is a string or list of strings, the next filter can be an include, exclude or begin:

mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address "show datapath session table | $._data | inc 10.1.2.3"

Selecting controllers

By default mmcollect selects the controllers to scan by running show switches in the Mobility Manager, and filtering the output with the filter expression ?(@.Status == 'up')) to find out all controllers that are 'up'.

You can narrow down the controllers that mmcollect will scan by specifyng additional jsonpath filter expressions with the -f flag. A few examples:

# Run the commands on Aruba 7005 controllers:
mmcollect -h your.mm.ip.address -u username -f "?(@.Model == 'Aruba7005')" "show version"

# Run the commands on controllers with SNMP Location matching regexp "Building1"
mmcollect -h your.mm.ip.address -u username -f "?(@.Location =~ /Building1/)" "show version"

# Run the command on controllers with status "UPDATE SUCCESSFUL"
mmcollect -h your.mm.ip.address -u username -f "?(@.Configuration_State == 'UPDATE SUCCESSFUL')" "show version"

You can also specify several filter criteria separated by pipes, as usual:

# Run the commands on Aruba 7010 controllers with status "UPDATE SUCCESSFUL":
mmcollect -h your.mm.ip.address -u username -f "?(@.Model == 'Aruba7010') | ?(@.Configuration_State == 'UPDATE SUCCESSFUL')" "show version"

Field selectors

Sometimes you don't want the full JSON object returned by the controller, but just a few fields. MMcollect lets you combine filtering with field selection, usign the > sign after the command or filter. Name the fields you want extracted, separated by commas:

mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address "show ip access-list brief | $.Access_list_table_4_IPv4_6_IPv6[?(@.Type == 'session(4)')] > Name, Type"
Password:

2018/05/10 19:15:41 Getting the switch list
2018/05/10 19:15:41 Switch list collected, working on a set of 2
2018/05/10 19:15:41 Waiting for workers to complete!
CONTROLLER  x.x.x.x
allow-diskservices;session(4)
allow-printservices;session(4)
ap-acl;session(4)
captiveportal;session(4)
citrix-acl;session(4)
# ... omitted for brevity

Running several commands in a row

You can run several consecutive commands, separated by a semicolon:

mmcollect -h your.mm.ip.address -u username "show ip interface brief; show user-table verbose"

Each command can have its own set of filters and field selectors.

mmcollect -h your.mm.ip.address -u username "show ip interface brief | inc vlan; show user-table verbose"

Running several threads in parallel

Just add the -t threads option to the command line to set the number of parallel jobs. By default, it is 25.

mmcollect -h your.mm.ip.address -u username -t 50 "show ip interface brief; show user-table verbose"

Delay between commands

What if you want to run some command a few times, like "show datapath session table", waiting a few seconds between each run? mmcollect got you covered with the flag -d delay_seconds:

# Run "show datapath session" twice, with 5 seconds delay between each run
mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address -d 5 "show datapath session table | $.data; show datapath session table | $.data"

Looping

Finally, if you want to run the commands in a loop, yo can also use the -L delay_seconds flag:

# Run "show datapath session" twice, with 5 seconds delay between each run, and then wait for 60 seconds
mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address -L 60 -d 5 "show datapath session table | $.data; show datapath session table | $.data"

Saving output to files

You can tell mmconnect to save the output of each controller to a separate file with the -o flag. Each controller will get its output saved to a separate file, named after the controller's IP address.

For instance, if you want to same all the logs into folder logs with names switch_<IP.address.of.controller>.log, give mmcollect the prefix -t logs/switch_:

# Run "show datapath session table" and store the result in a separate file under logs/, for each MD
mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address -o logs/switch_ "show datapath session table"

Running in batch

If you want to run the command in batch mode (not interactively), you can provide the password through the *-p flag, for example:

mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address -p <your-password> "show datapath session table"

It might be wise to use environment variables or shell expansion instead of a literal password, so your credentials do not show up in the output of "ps -a", for example:

# Use an environment variable
mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address -p "$MYPASS" "show datapath session table"
# Use a secret file
mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address -p `cat ~/.secret_pass` "show datapath session table"

Scripting

mmcollect can run a script once per controller. Set the path of the script with the -s flag, and mmcollect will read the file and run it after it finishes collecting the data of each controller.

The script must be valid JavaScript, and is parsed using the otto engine. The javascript code will have access to the following global variables and functions:

• data: Array: An array with the output of each command: data[0] is the result of the first show command, data[1] is the result of the second, and so on.

• getenv(name: string): A function to get environment variables by name.

• session: Object: A session object that lets the script interact with the controller. It currently supports:

  • date: string: The date of the session, in YYYY-MM-dd format.
  • time: time: The time of the session, in HH:mm:ss format.
  • ip: string: The IP address of the controller (read-only).
  • post(cfg_path: string, api_endpoint: string, data: object): Send HTTP POST request to the controller.
  • get(cfg_path: string, api_endpoint: string, data: object): Send HTTP GET request to the controller.
  • done(): Stops looping for this MD (if -L delay flag was used in the command line)

For instance, say you want to drop all users sending SMB traffic, using aaa user delete. You can look for port 445 in the output of the show datapath session table, and POST a message to the controller to delete those users. Save this script as aaa_user_delete.js:

// The script expects data0 to be the output of "show datapath session table | $._data | inc 445"
_.each(data[0], function(line) {
  // The first field in the output of "show datapath session table" is the source IP.
  // The API call to delete an IP address is "/configurations/object/aaa_user_delete;
  // you can skip the "/configurations/", it is added by the `Post` function.
  var source_ip = line.match(/\S+/g)[0];
  session.post("/mm", "object/aaa_user_delete", { "ipaddr": source_ip });
})

And then run your collector with -s aaa_user_delete.js:

mmcollect -u admin -h your.mm.ip.address -s aaa_user_delete.js "show datapath session table | $._data | include 445"

Backup

mmcollect can run a "backup flash" on the MM and download the backup to the local machine, using an FTP server as intermediate storage. When given the URL of an FTP server with the -backup flag, mmcollect will:

• Run a backup flash command on the MM.
• Copy the flash backup file to the FTP server.
• Download the file from the FTP server to the current folder.
• Remove the file from the FTP server.

The FTP URL must have the following format: ftp://user:pass@host/path/file.tar.gz, where:

• user: FTP user name
• pass: FTP user password. Can be omitted, and mmcollect will prompt for it.
• host: FTP host name or IP address. If it is a host name, mmcollect will try to resolve it to an IP address.
• path: Folder inside the FTP server. It will always be considered a relative path, i.e. prefix "/" will be removed.
• file.tar.gz: Backup filename. Must end with '.tgz' or '.tar.gz'.

Neither the path nor the filename can begin with a '.' or a '-' character. Other than that, path can contain any alphanumeric character, '.', '-' or '_'.