Problem

After upgrading CatTools to v3.4 (or later), devices previously setup in CatTools to connect using a 'Method' of SSH, no longer work.


Reason

In CatTools v3.4, two new fields were added to the 'Passwords' tab of the device set-up: SSH Username and SSH Password. Previously devices used to use the (AAA/Radius/TACACS/Local authentication) Username and Password field values as the SSH credentials.   This works fine so long as devices only required either SSH or AAA/Radius/TACACS/Local authentication; or in the case of devices that use SSH for the connection but then also require Local device authentication, this would still be OK providing the same credentialswere used for both SSH and Local. However, for added security, it is becoming more common place to have a different set of credentialsfor SSH and Local device authentication; therefore CatTools needed to facilitate this in the device setup form.

When you upgrade CatTools to v3.4 from a v3.3.x or older version, changes are required to the CatTools database schema to add the new SSH Username and SSH Password fields. As long as the recommended upgrade process is followed http://www.kiwisyslog.com/kb/how-to:-install%10upgrade-kiwi-cattools/ the database schema upgrade code also duplicates the values within the AAA Username and AAA Password fields and adds them to the new SSH Username and SSH Password fields, therefore ensuring that CatTools continues to connect to SSH devices correctly.

If after upgrading to v3.4 (or later) you find CatTools can no longer connect to your SSH devices, it is likely that the SSH Username and SSH Password fields have not been updated.
One cause of this is that devices have been imported from a prev3.4 system using the 'Import devices from tab delimited file' menu item, which is not a recommended upgrade process.
By using this method, because there is no SSH Username and SSH Password fields in the prev3.4 export file; no data is available to add into the new SSH fields on import.


Workarounds

If for any reason you find your SSH devices are in this state, there are a couple of work arounds available to get the SSH values updated within the CatTools database.

The first option is to run a couple of database update activities.
The DB.UpdateDevice.Password field activity was updated in v3.4 to include the SSH Password field.  This will allow you to update a group of devices (if they use the same SSH credentials) within the database with a new SSH Password. 
Likewise, in v3.4, the DB.UpdateDevice.Text field activity was updated to include the SSH Username field.

The second option would be retry installing v3.4 (or later) using the recommended process (*Note: this will only work if you backup of your CatTools database prior to running the v3.4 installer).  The steps are:

• Uninstall v3.4 (or later version you have installed) using the uninstaller program (START > Programs > SolarWinds Kiwi CatTools > Uninstall).
• Replace the CatTools database file with your backed up database version (which will be in the v3.3.x or older database schema format).
• Reinstall CatTools v3.4.  The database will then be upgraded and the AAA Username and AAA Password values copied to the new SSH Username and SSH Password fields.