Config file for Digi One SP?

Serial Servers & Infrastructure Mangement Portserver TS
1

My company uses Digi One SPs to communicate with our hardware. We have a few hundred installs to do and are going to use a 3rd party vendor. We do not want to train every install tech how to interface to, and configure, a Digi One SP via the serial port or HTTP. We would prefer they not have to use the Digi config menus at all.

Instead we would like to just push a config file to the Digi for the installer and all they have to do is run our app on the same subnet and we will discover the device and push the config. Is that possible with a Digi?

Thanks for your help.

2

It should be possible. The Digi One SP configuration can be downloaded into a file via Web UI (Administration > Backup/Restore) or by capturing the configuration from a commandline session after issuing command “cpconf term”.

The config file itself is a text file, and can be edited with any text editor to change things like IP address, gateway address, subnet mask, etc.

You could then use some sort of python or expect script to either push the file to the Digi One SP via commandline session, or to run “cpconf fromhost” and load the config file from a tftp server.

Details of the cpconf command can be found here on page 58: http://ftp1.digi.com/support/documentation/92000304_N.pdf

3

Perhaps someone else has a more clever solution, but the times I’ve dealt with hundreds of units (or should say customers of mine do) I suggest this method:

  1. get 1 unit configured by the Web UI and working perfectly

  2. from the Web UI, do the “backup” to save the config file on your PC - this file is a normal text file, but it has mixed CR/NL form so use WordPad (not NotePad) to edit.

  3. delete the few unit specific lines - probably just this line, at least the ip=x.x.x.x but could leave submask in the file.

    set config ip=192.168.196.130 submask=255.255.255.0

  4. for a new unit, discover it via Digi’s normal tool.

  5. login by Web UI and do a restore of the backup file with the IP deleted, making sure you manually set the desired IP address.

Unless you are using DHCP & can handle IP addresses changing over time, then you still need to manually assign the IP to every unit; so you still need to discover & log into all hundred+ units. However but the Web UI Restore goes fast and it allows you to know it worked.

Other customers have written BASIC or Python scripts to do this via telnet.

4

So among the other options, we could have a tech open a browser, type in the default IP address to get to the main menu, and use the ‘restore’ function to load our standard config file to overwrite the factory defaults?

5

Good idea. This would work great for a single install with hundreds of Digis. However this situation is hundreds of installs with only one Digi and one tech. We are trying not to train hundreds of techs and want to standardize and fool proof the install and configuration of the Digis. The only variable would be IP address which we would have the install tech provide for us in a separate GUI.

6

If you want 200 different people to each install 1 unit, then you’ll need to use a simple scripting tool to front end it - Basic or Python would work.

I actually do this for my automated tests, so each test uses telnet to force the product into the correct configuration.

I created a Wiki page for you which explains how this is done. Of course this assumes the Windows or Linux computer running it has Python installed:
http://www.digi.com/wiki/python/index.php/Use_Telnet_to_Configure

Plus if you go to the TALK page, I uploaded that script bundled as a Windows EXE by the py2exe utility. This makes it quite large (4MB) but it could be sent to technicians on a CD or USB key:
http://www.digi.com/wiki/python/index.php/Talk:Use_Telnet_to_Configure

Unfortunately I don’t have any raw C or C++ tools for Windows so cannot create native EXE.