Junos Aide (Jaide) and the CLI tool

About

Contributors: Geoff Rhodes and Nathan Printz
Read The Docs
Jaide Github
Jaide GUI Github
Pypi Page
OSX/Windows Compiled Versions

Table of Contents:

• About
  
• Description
  
• Jaide vs the CLI tool vs the GUI
  
  • What are They?
    
  • Which is for me?
    
• Installation
  
• Usage
  
• Python Requirements
  

Description:

The jaide package contains two parts: a class library for developers (here called Jaide), and a CLI tool for network engineers (referred to as the CLI tool). The function of the Jaide class is to allow an engineer or developer to create and use a Jaide object for manipulating Junos devices. Similarly, the CLI tool can be used to manipulate or retrieve information/files/output from one or many devices. Not surprisingly, the CLI tool uses the Jaide class for its internal operations. Some features of both Jaide and the CLI tool include being able to poll devices for interface errors, grab basic system information, send any operational mode commands, send and commit a file containing a list of set commands, copy files to/from devices, get a configuration diff between two devices, perform a commit check, and run shell commands. A full list of features and their usage is available in the documentation.

There is also a GUI available that wraps the CLI tool. More on it can be found at the Jaide GUI github page.

Jaide, and therefore the CLI tool and the Jaide GUI, leverage several connection types to JunOS devices using python, including: ncclient, paramiko, and scp. With this base of modules, our goal is the ability to perform as many functions that you can do by directly connecting to a device from a remote interface (either Jaide object, or the CLI tool). Since we can do these remotely from one interface, these functions rapidly against multiple devices very easily. The CLI tool leverages multiprocessing for handling multiple connections simultaneously. Pushing code and upgrading 20 devices is quite a simple task with the Jaide tool in hand.

NOTE This tool is most beneficial to those who have a basic understanding of JUNOS. This tool can be used to perform several functions against multiple Juniper devices running Junos very easily. Please understand the ramifications of your actions when using this script before executing it. You can push very significant changes or CPU intensive commands to a lot of devices in the network from one command or GUI execution. This tool should be used with forethought, and we are not responsible for negligence, misuse, time, outages, damages or other repercussions as a result of using this tool.

Jaide vs the CLI tool vs the GUI

What are They?

The Jaide project is split into two packages, the jaide package, and the jaidegui package.

Currently, the jaide Python package includes two things: the Jaide class library for developers, and a CLI tool for network administrators and engineers.

The jaidegui package is a separate Github repository, for ease of change control and management. It includes the GUI and the compiled versions, and can be found here.

Which is for me?

• Are you wanting to easily manipulate Junos devices using a GUI instead of a CLI, and don't want to worry about Python or programming?

  • We recommend the latest compiled Mac or Windows version of the Jaide GUI available on the Jaide GUI releases page.
    

• Are you wanting to easily manipulate Junos devices through a CLI tool that can be used on any OS?

  • We recommend following the pip installation instructions and using the jaide command that is installed into your OS PATH variable. Basic command usage and further specific examples are in the docs.
    

• Are you wanting to write python scripts that can manipulate Junos?

  • Follow the pip installation instructions and take a look at the Jaide Class Examples section of the docs.
    

• Are you wanting to help work on the Jaide project, or just want to take a look under the hood of the CLI tool or Jaide library?

  • Download the source code, and start poking around!

Installation

The easiest way to install Jaide is through pip:

> pip install jaide  

Manual installation can be accomplished by downloading the source code and running the following command:

> python setup.py install  

Usage:

Full usage documentation and version history can be found on the Read The Docs site.

After the jaide packages is installed, you have access to the jaide command in any terminal window. To enable tab completion of jaide commands, add the following line to your os-relevant ~/.bashrc | ~/.bash_profile | ~/.profile:

# Enable Jaide tab completion
eval "$(_JAIDE_COMPLETE=source jaide)"

At this point you can type jaide <TAB><TAB> to see all commands, and jaide -<TAB><TAB> to see all options (notice the dash before the two tabs).

Python Requirements:

Jaide is unfortunately only available on Python version 2.7, due to a required package being Python 2.7 only compatible.

Pip should handle retrieving any necessary requirements, but we list them here for verbosity. The versions of these packages below are the ones that we've tested with.

NCCLIENT >=0.4.2 - https://github.com/leopoul/ncclient/
PARAMIKO >=1.14.0 - https://github.com/paramiko/paramiko
SCP >=0.8.0 - https://github.com/jbardin/scp.py
COLORAMA 0.3.3 - https://pypi.python.org/pypi/colorama
CLICK >=3.3 - http://click.pocoo.org/3/
ECDSA >=0.11 - https://pypi.python.org/pypi/ecdsa
PYCRYPTO >=2.1,!=2.4 - https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pycrypto