TheDudeToHuman

This is a Mikrotik The Dude database exporter. Pulls the database from your mikrotik device loads the contents and saves the contents into a new database with symbols.

Why

There's no support from Mikrotik to access this data easily. Either by API, CLI or the dude itself. The most useful tool mikrotik provides is to export to csv which ommits a lot data. More importantly the object index. Which is used to easily identify a device from the database.

The Dude database uses SQLite. But all the objects are stored in a proprietary binary blob rendering useless for querying any kind of info out of the database. This program parses every single binary blob into a well defined structure with field names.

Security concerns

The database stores IP address, usernames and passwords in plain text. Please keep all your backups and data stored by this program with care.

Usage

Provide either database file or mikrotik device. Specifify the output path and wait until the program it's done. This may take several minutes depending on the database size.

Usage: the_dude_to_human.exe [options] <filename>
-f, --file                                 Load the specified database file
-o, --out                                  Store database location
-m, --mikrotik=user:password@address:port  Connect to the specified mikrotik device
-h, --help                                 Display this help and exit

Development

Make sure that the submodules are initialized.

git submodule update --init --recursive

Generate project structure with CMake with default settings and compile the project.

Future Goals

• Export the contents to a remote database
• Export into other formats json, csv, etc.
• Repair database corruption with minimal dataloss
• Clean database. Reduce size by removing unused objects and polling data.
• Compact database. Overtime objects id get too large leading to integer overflows. This should reorganize settings to keep the database in good shape.