Introduction

The device prompts that a driver can expect to encounter on accessing a device can be configured without modifications to the device driver. These modifications are made by copying the associated xml file into the custompackage directory, as described in the previous section.

The device prompts are organized in a strict three-level hierarchy:

1. Global Prompts

   Default prompt regular expressions shared by all DASL Drivers. These are the standard prompts with the default prompt regular expressions values (such as, stdEnablePromptState). These prompt regular expressions are used if they are not explicitly overridden.

2. Device Class Prompts

   Overrides of the standard prompts with device class (such as, Cisco IOS Router) specific values. Also, new device class specific prompts can be defined in these files. These overrides are used for all devices of the device class (for example, all Cisco IOS Routers).

3. IDX Prompts

   Overrides of the standard prompts for a specific device (such as, Nortel Router with IDX 1432). Also, device class specific prompts can be overridden in these files.

   The prompt xml files are used by DASL each time the Network Configuration Manager Logs into a device.

4. First, the Global prompts xml file is read, and all of the standard prompts are initialized with the regular expressions in this file.

5. Next, the Device Class prompts xml file is read (if it exists), and all of the prompts listed in it are initialized.

6. Finally, if a Device Class prompts file exists and an IDX prompts xml file is present, all of the prompts listed are initialized. All prompt files are deployed into a subdirectory in the package/pkgxml directory of the Network Configuration Manager Installation directory. Prompt file changes should be placed in the corresponding custompackage directory.

   Note:

   “Case 2: Make Changes to the Driver File .dasl or .inc (Interface Change)â€� on page 26 provides more information on custompackage directory.