how to know when a change was made?

Question

Is there a way via reporting or some other type of config compare that you can look at the current config and be able to see precisely when a change was made?  For example, we have cirrus configured to do a compare/download of running configs on all of our wan routers every hour.

The freeware config backup system we were using before, which leveraged CVS was able to annotate the current config with the version number of where that particular line first appeared in the config.  This is exrememly useful when trying to figure out exactly when a particular change was made without having to back track and compare configs one at a time.

If there is currently no way to do this, I would like to make a feature request for this to be added to an upcoming version.

bleearg13 · Answer

I am pretty sure you can get what you're looking for by using the 'Search Configs' tool.  The Search Configs tool is the little button with binoculars and a piece of paper in the toolbar.  If you expand the options by using the double arrows, you can see that you can specify not only the search string, but also the date and config type.

FormerMember · Answer

I've looked at it, but honestly, I don't know if that would help.  We already do a scheduled config check every hour, we really don't need to know any sooner than that if something changes.  What I really want to be able to do, is look at my latest config, and be able to compare that back against all of my other configs in the database and have it tell me in which one a particular line first appeared.

For example, if an interface configuration changes I want to be able to quickly find which config first saw that change occur to help isolate when a change happened.  Kind of an important feature as far as change management goes in my opinion.

FormerMember · Answer

Have you considered configuring Cirrus' Real Time Change notification ?

When I was running Cirrus 3.5.1 this was working great for us. It "broke" after upgrading to Cirrus 4.0, but I am anticipating Support will solve this soon for me.