A scanner util for NetBox, because certain networks can be updated automagically. netbox-scanner aims to create, update, and delete hosts (/32) in NetBox, either discovered by network scans and synchronized from other sources.
I know it's no more a scanner since version 2, because the focus now is to synchronize different databases to NetBox, so a better name would be
netbox-sync.
netbox-scanner is compatible with Python 3.9+, and can be installed like this:
$ wget https://github.com/lopes/netbox-scanner/archive/master.zip
$ unzip netbox-scanner-master.zip -d netbox-scanner
$ cd netbox-scanner
$ python3 -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
$ pip install -r requirements.txtAfter installation, use the netbox-scanner.conf file as an example to create your own and put this file
in /opt/netbox or prepend its name with a dot and put it in your home directory --~/.netbox-scanner.conf.
Keep reading to learn more about configuration.
Starting with Netbox v2.9.0 there are changes to the way tags are created. You must go into the web UI and explicity create a tag for each module you are planning to use here. So for example, if you want to use the nmap module, you have to create a Netbox tag called 'nmap' before you can successfully use it.
- Clone the repo and install the dependencies as shown above.
- Use the
netbox-scanner.conffile that you find in the project directory or create your own under (/opt/netbox/netbox-scanner.confor~/.netbox-scanner.conf) and fill out the variables according to your setup. - Fill the networks you want to scan (one per line) under
networks.txtand then runpython netbox-scanner.py nmapto get a first look at the behavior of this project.
netbox-scanner reads a user-defined source to discover IP addresses and descriptions, and insert them into NetBox. To control what was previously inserted, netbox-scanner adds tags to each record, so it will know that that item can be handled. In order to guarantee the integrity of manual inputs, records without such tags will not be updated or removed.
It is important to note that if netbox-scanner cannot define the description for a given host, then it will insert the string defined in the unknown parameter. Users can change those names at their own will.
For NetBox access, this script uses pynetbox --worth saying that was tested under NetBox v2.9.11.
If the user marked the cleanup option to yes, then netbox-scanner will run a garbage collector after the synchronization finishes. Basically, it will get all IP addresses recorded in NetBox under the same tag. Then, both lists will be compared: the one just retrieved from NetBox and the list that was synced. Hosts in the first list that don't appear in the second list will be deleted.
Users can interact with netbox-scanner by command line and configuration file. The latter is pretty simple and straight forward: the only parameter accepted is the module you want to use.
The configuration file (netbox-scanner.conf) is where netbox-scanner looks for details such as authentication data and path to files. This file can be stored on the user's home directory, on /opt/netbox or under the project root directory, but if you choose the first option, it must be a hidden file --.netbox-scanner.conf.
You can define as well ENV variables with the values represented in netbox-scanner.conf (do not delete the key from the file though) If you want to override a variable under section [NMAP] with key: networks you need to export an environment variables as follows:
NMAP_NETWORKS=192.168.1.0/24,192.168.2.0/24
Remember that ENV take preference then netbox-scanner will always look for this file at home directory, then at
/opt/netbox, and finally in the project root dir, in this order. The first occurrence will be considered.
Since version 2.0, netbox-scanner is based on modules. This way, this program is just a layer that takes data from one source and inputs in NetBox. Each module is a file inside the nbs directory and is imported by the main script to retrieve data. This data comes always as a 2-dimension array of tuple IP address, description:
[('10.0.1.1', 'Gateway'), ('10.0.1.2', 'Server'), ('10.0.1.64', 'Workstation'), ...]Performing the scans is incorporated now under netbox-scanner features, so you don't need to run Nmap yourself. In this version the scan doesn't need root privileges since it only checks for hosts up.
This script accesses Prime through RESTful API and all routines are implemented here. Users only have to point to Prime's API, which looks like https://prime.domain/webacs/api/v4/, inform valid credentials allowed to use the API, and fill the other variables, just like in Nmap.
It is important to note everything was tested on Cisco Prime v3.4.0, using API v4. It was noticed that when trying to retrieve access points data, Prime requires more privileges, so you must explicitly inform that you wish this by using Prime().run(access_points=True).
This module reads the full list of NetXMS' objects and searches for IPv4 addresses discarding loopback addresses. Unfortunately, NetXMS API is not well documented and it is quite different from other APIs, since it doesn't paginate and uses cookies for authentication. This way, querying NetXMS can take a couple of minutes depending on the number of records and it can downgrade the system.
Some basic tests are implemented under tests. This directory comes with a shell script to run all the tests at once, but before running it, remember to setup some environment variables required by them, such as NETBOX_ADDRESS and NMAP_PATH.
The script contains a list of all variables, but if you do not want to hardcode passwords, just make sure to export such variables in your shell and properly comment those lines.
New modules should be implemented as a new file with the name of the module, for instance nbs/netxms.py. In this case, a class NetXMS should be created in this file with a method run. Finally, in netbox-scanner.py, a function cmd_netxms should be created to execute the just created class, and another option should be created both in the argument parsing section and in the if structure inside the main block.
- Jarder Gonzalez for the great NetXMS' API tips.
netbox-scanner is licensed under an MIT license --read LICENSE file for more information.