Re: Windows GUI diff software with masking capability?

[Gary Dobbins <dobbins () ND EDU>]

There's a program that used to be included with Visual Studio called WinDiff that may be close to what you're seeking.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv
> [mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Justin Azoff
> Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 11:49 AM
> To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
> Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Windows GUI diff software with masking capability?
>
> On Wed, 2008-12-31 at 13:06 -0600, Youngquist, Jason R. wrote:
> > I’ve done some googling, and so far I haven’t found what I’m looking
> > for.  We have created a standard router template for all of our remote
> > campus routers.  What I’d like to be able to do is compare the router
> > template with the config from a router.  The issue is that there are
> > going to be a number of items such IP addresses, hostnames, etc. that
> > will be different between the two configuration files.  What I would
> > like is the ability to “mask out” these differences in the router
> > template, so differences in configuration will more easily stand out.
> > Does such a program exist?
>
> This is easy enough to implement:
>
> justin@dell /tmp % cat c.txt ip
> dhcp excluded-address 10.159.1.100 10.159.1.254
> ip dhcp excluded-address 10.159.65.200 10.159.65.254
> ip address 1.2.3.4 255.255.255.0
> ip address 1.2.3.5 255.255.255.0 secondary
> hostname R1
>
> justin@dell /tmp % ./mask.py c.txt
> ip dhcp excluded-address $DHCP_EX_IP1 $DHCP_EX_IP2
> ip dhcp excluded-address $DHCP_EX_IP1 $DHCP_EX_IP2
> ip address $IP $NETMASK
> ip address $IP_SEC $NETMASK_SEC secondary
> hostname $HOSTNAME
>
> for diffing something like this works:
> gvimdiff <(./mask.py c1.txt) <(./mask.py c2.txt)
>
> Something like that is probably doable in windows, though you might need
> to write out temp files.  All you need to do is mask the two input files
> and pass the result to your existing diff application.
>
> I've been working on a similar program to sort IOS config files, so
> something like
>
> interface fa0/1
>  speed 10
>  duplex full
>
> and
>
> interface fa0/1
>  duplex full
>  speed 10
>
>
> doesn't show up as a change.
>
> --
> -- Justin Azoff
> -- Network Performance Analyst