Napalm to Extreme Network devices about napalm-ios

[mirceaulinic]

Hi @fabbiomcosta

napalm-ios is using netmiko (https://github.com/ktbyers/netmiko/tree/master/netmiko) as transport libray. AFAIK netmiko provides now support for telnet - @ktbyers please correct me if I'm wrong. If that's the case, I think we can definitely introduce this feature, via a new optional argument (http://napalm.readthedocs.io/en/latest/support/index.html#optional-arguments). We can then extend this for other drivers as iosxr, junos (as junos-eznc 2.0 introduced telnet support) and maybe others.

[fabbiomcosta]

Hi @mirceaulinic,
I'm not a developer, but i saw that netmiko provides support for telnet. So, you are right.
How could I help you to deploy the new optional argument? I'm interested in helping this project.

[ktbyers]

Netmiko supports telnet using device_type 'cisco_ios_telnet'. Extreme might work using this driver (for Netmiko).

napalm-ios can't be made to work with telnet as configuration file operations all use secure copy to transfer files (at least as currently constructed).

[dbarrosop]

@ktbyers how hard would it be to support the getters over telnet? Obviously, if the user decide to use telnet as transport configuration related methods should be disabled.

[ktbyers]

@dbarrosop getters is probably easy if the Netmiko 'cisco_ios_telnet' driver just works.

[dbarrosop]

I will let you decide if it's worth supporting the getters via telnet. I understand configuration might be trickier.

[ktbyers]

I can't bring myself to implement this...if someone else wants to, submit a PR on it. You would just to add an optional_argument to pass in a protocol, telnet or ssh.

Then just switch the device_type from cisco_ios to cisco_ios_telnet.

[mirceaulinic]

You would just to add an optional_argument to pass in a protocol, telnet or ssh.

How does transport_type sound to you @ktbyers? The reasoning I'm asking is that we could probably offer telnet transport for other drivers as well.

Then just switch the device_type from cisco_ios to cisco_ios_telnet.

And raise exception for config-related methods? Or something else? - I understand they won't work at all over telnet.