I just plug one into the ethernet, use pminstall to assign it an IP
address, change a few lines (RADIUS and ChoiceNet secrets, ether0 and
pool addresses, pool size and switch type when necessary) in a script,
and run it with pmcommand. It takes me longer physically install it
(put the rack mount ears on, find some clips and screws and rack mount
it, then make an ethernet cable to fit) that to do the software setup.
Then I go sit in the system room, read mailing lists and news for an
hour or two while everyone thinks I'm setting up a new PM3! :-)
The only problem I had for a while was I had (more for safety than
anything) "set bgp off" in my script. The command would execute fine,
but then pmcommand would for some reason think there was an error and
stop. Since that is the default config anyway, I just took that line
out and now it works fine.
I save all my scripts (in a secure place, since they have passwords and
auth/filter secrets), so if I have any problems and change out a unit,
it would only take a couple of minutes.
I also have some emergency scripts, like one to configure a PM3 to
replace our Cisco 2501 (our router to the Internet). I set this one up
just this week when our 2501 went away for about 20 minutes. I tried to
make a change in it and save it to the flash, and it failed writing to
the flash. It decided to reboot itself, and then since the flash was
corrupt, died. I had to wipe the flash and load a configuration from
the network. It took me 15 minutes to figure out how to enable the
ethernet port: I set an address, but it defaulted to having the port
"administratively down". Stupid Cisco command of the week: how do you
take a port administratively up? "no shutdown" in interface config.
How intuitive.
-- Chris Adams - cadams@ro.com System Administrator - Renaissance Internet Services I don't speak for anybody but myself - that's enough trouble. - To unsubscribe, email 'majordomo@livingston.com' with 'unsubscribe portmaster-users' in the body of the message.