tacacs key ****

[australia.nmc]

Currently I'm having an issue with system configurations for the Cisco WAAS device.

In the running configuration it says the following:

tacacs key ****

Yet when you save the config (either via “write mem” or “copy running startup”) you see the following in startup configuration:

tacacs key *****

The extra asterix is causing our monitoring software to think there’s been a configuration change, and flagging it each morning.

Any thoughts on what might be causing this ? maybe there is a default number of " * " and the encryption automatically adds additional ones as an added security mesasure.

> I'm currently using an old version of OS

Cisco Wide Area Application Services Software Release 4.1.3b (build b9 Jul 30 20
09)
"Version: oe274-4.1.3b.9"

Any help will be appreciated.

Regards Erin Falconer

[Richard Burts]

Erin Falconer

You are running into the fact that the running-config and the startup-config have different structures and are built in different ways and therefore have different ways of representing the key value.

While the output of show running-config and of show startup-config look quite similar the underlying configurations are actually quite different. The runing config is a dynamic data structure that is maintained in RAM by the configuration commands that you enter. The startup config is a simple text file that is built by interpreting the running config to produce text output.

In each version of the configuration there is actually a value for the key which will be hidden as a result of the service password-encryption command. The people who coded the output representation of running config chose a certain number of asterisks and the people who coded the output representation of the startup config chose a different number of asterisks. I do not think that you could call this a bug.

The only way that I know of to solve the issue of flagging a "change" every morning would be to remove the service password-encryption command. While that would solve one issue it would really create a more serious issue.

HTH

Rick