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README v4.2.14 2024-10-15

Table of contents

1. General
   1.1 Extract the NED package
   1.2 Install the NED package
       1.2.1 Local install
       1.2.2 System install
   1.3 Configure the NED in NSO
2. Optional debug and trace setup
3. Dependencies
4. Sample device configuration
5. Built in live-status actions
6. Built in live-status show
7. Limitations
8. How to report NED issues

1. General

This document describes the quagga-bgp NED.

Additional README files bundled with this NED package

+---------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Name                      | Info                                                                         |
+---------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| README-ned-settings.md    | Information about all run time settings supported by this NED.               |
+---------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Common NED Features

+---------------------------+-----------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Feature                   | Supported | Info                                                             |
+---------------------------+-----------+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| netsim                    | yes       | Doesn't emulate a specific device, just using the model 'best-   |
|                           |           | effort'                                                          |
|                           |           |                                                                  |
| check-sync                | yes       | Two check-sync strategies accepted (config-hash and commit-      |
|                           |           | list), see ned-setting read transaction-id-method                |
|                           |           |                                                                  |
| partial-sync-from         | yes       | Will do a full show running-configuration towards device, and    |
|                           |           | filter the contents before sending to NSO                        |
|                           |           |                                                                  |
| live-status actions       | yes       | Commands supported as live-status actions: show|clear            |
|                           |           |                                                                  |
| live-status show          | yes       | Check README.md section 'Built in live-status show'              |
|                           |           |                                                                  |
| load-native-config        | yes       | Device native 'show configuration' CLIs can be parsed and loaded |
|                           |           | using this feature.                                              |
+---------------------------+-----------+------------------------------------------------------------------+

Verified target systems

+-------+---------+----+------+
| Model | Version | OS | Info |
+-------+---------+----+------+
+-------+---------+----+------+

1.1 Extract the NED package

It is assumed the NED package ncs-<NSO version>-quagga-bgp-<NED version>.signed.bin has already been downloaded from software.cisco.com.

In this instruction the following example settings will be used:

  • NSO version: 6.0

  • NED version: 1.0.1

  • NED package downloaded to: /tmp/ned-package-store

  1. Extract the NED package and verify its signature:

    > cd /tmp/ned-package-store
> chmod u+x ncs-6.0-quagga-bgp-1.0.1.signed.bin
> ./ncs-6.0-quagga-bgp-1.0.1.signed.bin

  2. In case the signature can not be verified (for instance if no internet connection), do as below instead:

    > ./ncs-6.0-quagga-bgp-1.0.1.signed.bin --skip-verification

  3. The result of the extraction shall be a tar.gz file with the same name as the .bin file:

    > ls *.tar.gz
ncs-6.0-quagga-bgp-1.0.1.tar.gz

1.2 Install the NED package

There are two alternative ways to install this NED package. Which one to use depends on how NSO itself is setup.

In the instructions below the following example settings will be used:

  • NSO version: 6.0

  • NED version: 1.0.1

  • NED download directory: /tmp/ned-package-store

  • NSO run time directory: ~/nso-lab-rundir

A prerequisite is to set the environment variable NSO_RUNDIR to point at the NSO run time directory:

> export NSO_RUNDIR=~/nso-lab-rundir

1.2.1 Local install

This section describes how to install a NED package on a locally installed NSO (see "NSO Local Install" in the NSO Installation guide).

It is assumed the NED package has been been unpacked to a tar.gz file as described in 1.1.

  1. Untar the tar.gz file. This creates a new sub-directory named:quagga-bgp-<NED major digit>.<NED minor digit>:

    > tar xfz ncs-6.0-quagga-bgp-1.0.1.tar.gz
> ls -d */
quagga-bgp-cli-1.0

  2. Install the NED into NSO, using the ncs-setup tool:

    > ncs-setup --package quagga-bgp-cli-1.0 --dest $NSO_RUNDIR

  3. Open a NSO CLI session and load the new NED package like below:

    > ncs_cli -C -u admin
admin@ncs# packages reload
reload-result {
    package quagga-bgp-cli-1.0
    result true
}

Alternatively the tar.gz file can be installed directly into NSO. Then skip steps 1 and 2 and do like below instead:

  > ncs-setup --package ncs-6.0-quagga-bgp-1.0.1.tar.gz --dest $NSO_RUNDIR
  > ncs_cli -C -u admin
  admin@ncs# packages reload
  reload-result {
    package quagga-bgp-cli-1.0
    result true
 }

1.2.2 System install

This section describes how to install a NED package on a system installed NSO (see "NSO System Install" in the NSO Installation Guide).

It is assumed the NED package has been been unpacked to a tar.gz file as described in 1.1.

  1. Do a NSO backup before installing the new NED package:

    > $NCS_DIR/bin/ncs-backup

  2. Start a NSO CLI session and fetch the NED package:

    > ncs_cli -C -u admin
admin@ncs# software packages fetch package-from-file \
          /tmp/ned-package-store/ncs-6.0-quagga-bgp-1.0.tar.gz
admin@ncs# software packages list
package {
 name ncs-6.0-quagga-bgp-1.0.tar.gz
 installable
}

  3. Install the NED package (add the argument replace-existing if a previous version has been loaded):

    admin@ncs# software packages install quagga-bgp-1.0
admin@ncs# software packages list
package {
 name ncs-6.0-quagga-bgp-1.0.tar.gz
 installed
}

  4. Load the NED package

    admin@ncs# packages reload
admin@ncs# software packages list
package {
  name ncs-6.0-quagga-bgp-cli-1.0
  loaded
}

1.3 Configure the NED in NSO

This section describes the steps for configuring a device instance using the newly installed NED package.

  • Start a NSO CLI session:

    > ncs_cli -C -u admin

  • Enter configuration mode:

    admin@ncs# configure
Entering configuration mode terminal
admin@ncs(config)#

  • Configure a new authentication group (my-group) to be used for this device:

    admin@ncs(config)# devices authgroup group my-group default-map remote-name <user name on device> \
                   remote-password <password on device>

  • Configure a new device instance (example: dev-1):

    admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 address <ip address to device>
admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 port <port on device>
admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 device-type cli ned-id quagga-bgp-cli-1.0
admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 state admin-state unlocked
admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 authgroup my-group
    admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 protocol <ssh or telnet>

  • If configured protocol is ssh, do fetch the host keys now:

    admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 ssh fetch-host-keys

  • Finally commit the configuration

    admin@ncs(config)# commit

  • Verify configuration, using a sync-from.

    admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 sync-from
result true

If the sync-from was not successful, check the NED configuration again.

2. Optional debug and trace setup

It is often desirable to see details from when and how the NED interacts with the device(Example: troubleshooting)

This can be achieved by configuring NSO to generate a trace file for the NED. A trace file contains information about all interactions with the device. Messages sent and received as well as debug printouts, depending on the log level configured.

NSO creates one separate trace file for each device instance with tracing enabled. Stored in the following location:

$NSO_RUNDIR/logs/ned-quagga-bgp-cli-1.0-<device name>.trace

Do as follows to enable tracing in one specific device instance in NSO:

  1. Start a NSO CLI session:

    > ncs_cli -C -u admin

  2. Enter configuration mode:

    admin@ncs# configure
Entering configuration mode terminal
admin@ncs(config)#

  3. Enable trace raw:

    admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 trace raw
admin@ncs(config)# commit

    Alternatively, tracing can be enabled globally affecting all configured device instances:

    admin@ncs(config)# devices global-settings trace raw
admin@ncs(config)# commit

  4. Configure the log level for printouts to the trace file:

    admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 ned-settings quagga-bgp logger \
                  level [debug | verbose | info | error]
admin@ncs(config)# commit

    Alternatively the log level can be set globally affecting all configured device instances using this NED package.

    admin@ncs(config)# devices device global-settings ned-settings quagga-bgp logger \
                  level [debug | verbose | info | error]
admin@ncs(config)# commit

The log level 'info' is used by default and the 'debug' level is the most verbose.

IMPORTANT: Tracing shall be used with caution. This feature does increase the number of IPC messages sent between the NED and NSO. In some cases this can affect the performance in NSO. Hence, tracing should normally be disabled in production systems.

An alternative method for generating printouts from the NED is to enable the Java logging mechanism. This makes the NED print log messages to common NSO Java log file.

$NSO_RUNDIR/logs/ncs-java-vm.log

Do as follows to enable Java logging in the NED

  1. Start a NSO CLI session:

    > ncs_cli -C -u admin

  2. Enter configuration mode:

    admin@ncs# configure
Entering configuration mode terminal
admin@ncs(config)#

  3. Enable Java logging with level all from the NED package:

    admin@ncs(config)# java-vm java-logging logger com.tailf.packages.ned.bgp \
                  level level-all
admin@ncs(config)# commit

  4. Configure the NED to log to the Java logger

    admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 ned-settings quagga-bgp logger java true
admin@ncs(config)# commit

    Alternatively Java logging can be enabled globally affecting all configured device instances using this NED package.

    admin@ncs(config)# devices global-settings ned-settings quagga-bgp logger java true
admin@ncs(config)# commit

IMPORTANT: Java logging does not use any IPC messages sent to NSO. Consequently, NSO performance is not affected. However, all log printouts from all log enabled devices are saved in one single file. This means that the usability is limited. Typically single device use cases etc.

3. Dependencies

This NED has the following host environment dependencies:

  • Java 1.8 (NSO version < 6.2)

  • Java 17 (NSO version >= 6.2)

  • Gnu Sed

Dependencies for NED recompile:

  • Apache Ant

  • Bash

  • Gnu Sort

  • Gnu awk

  • Grep

  • Python3 (with packages: re, sys, getopt, subprocess, argparse, os, glob)

4. Sample device configuration

NONE

5. Built in live-status actions

NONE

6. Built in live-status show

NONE

7. Limitations

NONE

8. How to report NED issues and feature requests

Issues like bugs and errors shall always be reported to the Cisco NSO NED team through the Cisco Support channel:

The following information is required for the Cisco NSO NED team to be able to investigate an issue:

- A detailed recipe with steps to reproduce the issue.
- A raw trace file generated when the issue is reproduced.
- SSH/TELNET access to a device where the issue can be reproduced by the Cisco NSO NED team.
  This typically means both read and write permissions are required.
  Pseudo access via tools like Webex, Zoom etc is not acceptable.
  However, it is ok with device access through VPNs, jump servers etc though.

Do as follows to gather the necessary information needed for your device, here named 'dev-1':

  1. Enable full debug logging in the NED

    ncs_cli -C -u admin
admin@ncs# configure
admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 ned-settings quagga-bgp logging level debug
admin@ncs(config)# commit

  2. Configure the NSO to generate a raw trace file from the NED

    admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 trace raw
admin@ncs(config)# commit

  3. If the NED already had trace enabled, clear it in order to submit only relevant information

    Do as follows for NSO 6.4 or newer:

    admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 clear-trace

    Do as follows for older NSO versions:

    admin@ncs(config)# devices clear-trace

  4. Run a compare-config to populate the trace with initial device config

    admin@ncs(config)# devices device dev-1 compare-config

  5. Reproduce the found issue using ncs_cli or your NSO service. Write down each necessary step in a reproduction report.

    In addition to this, it helps if you can show how it should work by manually logging into the device using SSH/TELNET and type the relevant commands showing a successful operation.

  6. Gather the reproduction report and a copy of the raw trace file containing data recorded when the issue happened.

  7. Contact the Cisco support and request to open a case. Provide the gathered files together with access details for a device that can be used by the Cisco NSO NED when investigating the issue.

Requests for new features and extensions of the NED are handled by the Cisco NSO NED team when applicable. Such requests shall also go through the Cisco support channel.

The following information is required for feature requests and extensions:

  1. Set the config on the real device including all existing dependent config and run sync-from to show it in the trace.

  2. Run sync-from # devices device dev-1 sync-from

  3. Attach the raw trace to the ticket

  4. List the config you want implemented in the same syntax as shown on the device

  5. SSH/TELNET access to a device that can be used by the Cisco NSO NED team for testing and verification of the new feature. This usually means that both read and write permissions are required. Pseudo access via tools like Webex, Zoom etc is not acceptable. However, it is ok with access through VPNs, jump servers etc as long as we can connect to the NED via SSH/TELNET.

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