Accessing Extreme Network devices via CLI running on BOSS

Get Help
1

Hello dear community,

I am currently working on a small Ansible project. We are currently using XIQ to access various ERS and VSP devices from Extreme Networks. This is being phased out as the license costs are far too high. With Ansible, I have already managed to access the VSP using a module (community.network.voss). However, I am having trouble executing CLI commands on devices running BOSS (Baystack Operating System Switching), such as the ERS3626GTS-PWR+. Unfortunately, I have not found a module for this; is there one that I might be overlooking? The goal is simply to execute CLI commands on the devices.

Kind Regards

1 Like
2

Are you aware of the ansible.builtin.command module, ansible.builtin.shell module and ansible.builtin.expect module these might provide all you need? Or perhaps I have misunderstood the issue?

1 Like
3

I have tried using ansible.builtin.ssh which resulted in the following error message:
fatal: [X.X.X.X]: FAILED! => {“msg”: “network os ansible.builtin.ssh is not supported”}

But I may have missed the modules you’ve listed. I’ll give them a try once I arrive at work.

4

Ah, I was assuming you can SSH to the devices, is this not the case?

5

Yes I can SSH to the devices, they have a normal CLI which you can access via SSH. Maybe there is a problem in my Inventory.ini since thats the place where I defined the network os which then uses the ansible.builtin.ssh

1 Like
6

Hello to all, I habe the same issue with the BOSS based Switches. Has anyone found a solution on this?

As far as I’ve figured out, it’s due to the command pass from Ansible to sshpass. Ansible is passing a shell call that can’t work because no shell is present. The shell call is as follows: ‘/bin/sh -c ‘"’“‘echo ~RW && sleep 0’”’"‘’

Does anyone have any idea how to disable this shell call?
Regards and many thanks in Advance for your support
Rolf

1 Like
7

Great to know !!!

8

Hello, does anyone have an idea to solve the problem?

The ping module behaves the same way. In addition to the “show clock” argument, a shell call is passed.
sudo -H -S -n -u root /bin/sh -c ‘"’“‘echo BECOME-SUCCESS-kimxyplsdcwnvuwrtjfsymyvmgniumwn ; show clock’”‘"’'-
Is there a way to prevent this shell call?

Regards
Rolf

9

so looks like the default connection plugin attempts to run commands via /bin/sh -c, which doesn’t exist on BOSS.
I think this behavior might driven by ansible_shell_type and ansible_shell_executable, which are used in the ConnectionBase class to load the appropriate shell plugin via get_shell_plugin().So If you don’t know the CLI binary path or don’t want Ansible to wrap commands at all, I believe we can try to prevent Ansible from using any shell at all:
may be something like this would work

ansible_shell_type=none
ansible_shell_executable=/bin/true
1 Like
10

Hello, many thanks for your hint.

I tried ist, but no luck. The failure message below:

FAILED! => {“msg”: “Could not find the shell plugin required (none).”}

I checked the documentation about possible sheels and I see

root@ansible:/etc/ansible# ansible-doc -t shell -l
ansible.builtin.cmd Windows Command Prompt
ansible.builtin.powershell Windows PowerShell
ansible.builtin.sh POSIX shell (/bin/sh)
ansible.posix.csh C shell (/bin/csh)
ansible.posix.fish fish shell (/bin/fish)
root@ansible:/etc/ansible#

There is no option to use no shell.

regards

Rolf