Configuring IS-IS on FRRouting

Most networking devices¹ use a configuration command line interface (CLI) to interact with the end-user. The CLI usually provides show commands to inspect the state of the device and a configuration mode that allows the user to configure the device.

FRRouting is different. It’s a suite of application-layer daemons running on Linux. Linux shell is used as the initial CLI. To configure a device that uses FRRouting without an extra CLI wrapper (like VyOS), you usually have to:

• Use standard Linux tools like ifupdown to configure the interfaces;
• Edit FRRouting configuration files to start routing protocol daemons
• Start FRRouting configuration shell from the Linux CLI.

The Linux interfaces and IP addresses will be configured automatically if you start the IS-IS labs with the netlab up command. You will have to start the routing protocol daemons in the initial lab exercises if you plan to use FRRouting within virtual machines as the user routers, and you might have to execute show commands on Cumulus Linux or FRRouting acting as the external routers. You’ll practice both in this lab exercise.

Start the Lab

You can start the lab on your own lab infrastructure or in GitHub Codespaces (more details):

• Change directory to basic/0-frrouting
• Execute netlab up to start a lab with two FRRouting virtual machines or containers (depending on your lab setup). R2 is preconfigured to run IS-IS; if you’re using virtual machines, you might have to enable the IS-IS daemon on R1.
• Log into the devices (r1 and r2) with the netlab connect command.

Start the IS-IS Daemon

Most network devices start routing daemons when you configure them through the configuration CLI or API. FRRouting is different. To start a routing daemon, you must enable the desired routing daemons in a configuration file and restart the top-level FRRouting process.

You can check the FRR daemon processes running on your virtual machines with the sudo systemctl status frr.service command. It displays the running FRR daemons and the recent FRR logging messages, for example²:

r2(bash)#sudo systemctl status frr.service
● frr.service - FRRouting
     Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/frr.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Wed 2024-07-17 17:09:27 UTC; 37s ago
       Docs: https://frrouting.readthedocs.io/en/latest/setup.html
    Process: 4051 ExecStart=/usr/lib/frr/frrinit.sh start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   Main PID: 4071 (watchfrr)
     Status: "FRR Operational"
      Tasks: 1 (limit: 1049)
     Memory: 1.8M
     CGroup: /system.slice/frr.service
             └─4071 /usr/lib/frr/watchfrr -d -F traditional zebra mgmtd isisd staticd

Jul 17 17:09:27 r2 systemd[1]: Starting FRRouting...
Jul 17 17:09:27 r2 frrinit.sh[4051]:  * Starting watchfrr with command: '  /usr/lib/frr/watchfrr  -d  -F traditional   zebra mgmtd >
Jul 17 17:09:27 r2 watchfrr[4071]: [T83RR-8SM5G] watchfrr 10.0.1 starting: vty@0
Jul 17 17:09:27 r2 watchfrr[4071]: [QDG3Y-BY5TN] zebra state -> up : connect succeeded
Jul 17 17:09:27 r2 watchfrr[4071]: [QDG3Y-BY5TN] mgmtd state -> up : connect succeeded
Jul 17 17:09:27 r2 watchfrr[4071]: [QDG3Y-BY5TN] isisd state -> up : connect succeeded
Jul 17 17:09:27 r2 watchfrr[4071]: [QDG3Y-BY5TN] staticd state -> up : connect succeeded
Jul 17 17:09:27 r2 watchfrr[4071]: [KWE5Q-QNGFC] all daemons up, doing startup-complete notify
Jul 17 17:09:27 r2 frrinit.sh[4051]:  * Started watchfrr
Jul 17 17:09:27 r2 systemd[1]: Started FRRouting.

You cannot use the same command in FRRouting containers as they don’t use systemd. The easiest way to find daemons in FRRouting containers is to use the ps -ef|grep frr command³. This is the printout you could get when the IS-IS daemon is already running:

    1 root      0:00 /sbin/tini -- /usr/lib/frr/docker-start
    7 root      0:00 {docker-start} /bin/bash /usr/lib/frr/docker-start
   15 root      0:00 /usr/lib/frr/watchfrr zebra mgmtd isisd staticd
   25 frr       0:00 /usr/lib/frr/zebra -d -F datacenter -A 127.0.0.1 -s 90000000
   30 frr       0:00 /usr/lib/frr/mgmtd -d -F datacenter
   32 frr       0:00 /usr/lib/frr/isisd -d -F datacenter -A 127.0.0.1
   35 frr       0:00 /usr/lib/frr/staticd -d -F datacenter -A 127.0.0.1
  366 root      0:00 grep frr

The list of FRRouting daemons you want to enable is stored in the /etc/frr/daemons file. To enable the FRRouting IS-IS daemon, you have to:

• Add the isisd=yes line to the /etc/frr/daemons file⁴.
• Restart FRRouting with the sudo systemctl restart frr.service command (see also: using sudo)

You could add the required line to the FRRouting daemons file with any text editor⁷ or use the following trick:

• Use sudo bash to start another Linux shell as the root user
• Use the echo command with output redirection to add a line to the /etc/frr/daemons file.

rtr(bash)#sudo bash
root@rtr:/# echo 'isis=yes' >>/etc/frr/daemons
root@rtr:/# exit

After enabling the IS-IS daemon and restarting FRR, you should see the isisd process in the ps -ef printout or the IS-IS daemon mentioned in the sudo systemctl status frr.service printout.

Work with the FRRouting CLI

FRRouting suite includes a virtual shell (vtysh) closely resembling industry-standard CLI⁸. It has to be started from the Linux command line with the vtysh command. The vtysh CLI has to run as the root user unless you change the FRR-related permissions to allow a regular user to use it. The usual command to start the vtysh is thus sudo vtysh (but see also To Sudo Or Not to Sudo).

r2(bash)#sudo vtysh

Hello, this is FRRouting (version 9.1_git).
Copyright 1996-2005 Kunihiro Ishiguro, et al.

r2#

Once you started vtysh, you can execute show commands to inspect the device state, for example:

r2(bash)#sudo vtysh

Hello, this is FRRouting (version 9.1_git).
Copyright 1996-2005 Kunihiro Ishiguro, et al.

r2# show ip route
Codes: K - kernel route, C - connected, S - static, R - RIP,
       O - OSPF, I - IS-IS, B - BGP, E - EIGRP, N - NHRP,
       T - Table, v - VNC, V - VNC-Direct, A - Babel, F - PBR,
       f - OpenFabric,
       > - selected route, * - FIB route, q - queued, r - rejected, b - backup
       t - trapped, o - offload failure

C>* 10.0.0.2/32 is directly connected, lo, 00:02:26
C>* 10.1.0.0/30 is directly connected, eth1, 00:02:26

You can also use the --show option of the netlab connect command to execute a single command on a FRR/Cumulus Linux device[^UQ]. For example, to inspect the IS-IS topology database, use netlab connect --show isis database:

$ netlab connect r2 --show isis database
Connecting to container clab-frrouting-r2, executing vtysh -c "show isis database"
Area Gandalf:
IS-IS Level-2 link-state database:
LSP ID                  PduLen  SeqNumber   Chksum  Holdtime  ATT/P/OL
r2.00-00             *     81   0x00000001  0xec86    1489    0/0/0
    1 LSPs

To configure FRRouting daemons, use the configure vtysh command and enter configuration commands similar to those you’d use on Cisco IOS or Arista EOS:

r2(bash)#vtysh

Hello, this is FRRouting (version 9.1_git).
Copyright 1996-2005 Kunihiro Ishiguro, et al.

r2# configure
r2(config)# router isis Gandalf
r2(config-router)#

To Sudo Or Not to Sudo

The vtysh usually has to run as the root user, so you should start it with the sudo vtysh command. Unfortunately, things are never as simple as they look in the Linux world:

• When using SSH, you log into Cumulus Linux or FRRouting virtual machines as a regular user (user vagrant in netlab-created labs) and have to use the sudo command to start vtysh.
• Cumulus Linux and FRR containers run as the root user, and you connect to them as the root user with the docker exec or netlab connect commands⁹. When working with containers, you can start vtysh without using the sudo command.
• You can execute sudo vtysh as a root user on Cumulus Linux containers but not within an FRR container. The FRR container does not include the sudo command.

Long story short:

• Use sudo vtysh whenever possible to burn it into your muscle memory.
• Use vtysh if you use FRRouting containers as the lab devices.

Using Output Filters

Unlike many other network operating systems, FRRouting vtysh does not have output filters. You probably don’t need them as you’ll be running FRR on top of a Unix-like operating system that supports pipes, but it might be a bit convoluted to use vtysh in a pipe.

To use the vtysh output in a pipe, you have to execute vtysh and get the results of a show command in a single command:

• You could use sudo vtysh -c 'show command' when you’re in the bash shell of a lab device, for example:

r2(bash)#vtysh -c 'show isis database'|grep r2
r2.00-00             *     81   0x00000001  0xec86    1302    0/0/0

• Alternatively, you could use the netlab connect --show command to execute a vtysh show command on a lab device:

$ netlab connect r2 -q --show isis database|grep r2
r2.00-00             *     81   0x00000001  0xec86    1286    0/0/0

The following table contains a mapping between common network operating system filters and Linux CLI commands:

NOS filter	Linux CLI command
include	grep
exclude	grep -v
begin	grep -A 1000010
end	grep -B 10000
section	no equivalent