Nokia SR Linux#

Nokia SR Linux NOS is identified with srl or nokia_srlinux kind in the topology file. A kind defines a supported feature set and a startup procedure of a node.

Getting SR Linux image#

Nokia SR Linux is the first commercial Network OS with a free and open distribution model. Everyone can pull SR Linux container from a public registry:

# pull latest available release
docker pull ghcr.io/nokia/srlinux

To pull a specific version, use tags that match the released version and are listed in the srlinux-container-image repo.

Managing SR Linux nodes#

There are many ways to manage SR Linux nodes, ranging from classic CLI management all the way up to the gNMI programming.

docker exec -it <container-name/id> bash

docker exec -it <container-name/id> sr_cli

gnmic -a <container-name/node-mgmt-address> --skip-verify \
-u admin -p admin \
-e json_ietf \
get --path /system/name/host-name

curl http://admin:admin@clab-srl-srl/jsonrpc -d @- << EOF
{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "id": 0,
    "method": "get",
    "params":
    {
        "commands":
        [
            {
                "path": "/system/information/version",
                "datastore": "state"
            }
        ]
    }
}
EOF

Interfaces mapping#

SR Linux system expects interfaces inside the container to be named in a specific way - eX-Y - where X is the line card index, Y is the port.

With that naming convention in mind:

• e1-1 - first ethernet interface on line card 1
• e1-2 - second interface on line card 1
• e2-1 - first interface on line card 2

These interface names are seen in the Linux shell; however, when configuring the interfaces via SR Linux CLI, the interfaces should be named as ethernet-X/Y where X/Y is the linecard/port combination.

Interfaces can be defined in a non-sequential way, for example:

  links:
    # srlinux port ethernet-1/5 is connected to sros port 2
    - endpoints: ["srlinux:e1-5", "sros:eth2"]

Breakout interfaces#

If the interface is intended to be configured as a breakout interface, its name must be changed accordingly.

The breakout interfaces will have the name eX-Y-Z where Z is the breakout port number. For example, if interface ethernet-1/3 on an IXR-D3 system is meant to act as a breakout 100Gb to 4x25Gb, then the interfaces in the topology must use the following naming:

  links:
    # srlinux's first breakout port ethernet-1/3/1 is connected to sros port 2
    - endpoints: ["srlinux:e1-3-1", "sros:eth2"]

Features and options#

Types#

For SR Linux nodes type defines the hardware variant that this node will emulate.

The available type values are: ixrd1, ixrd2, ixrd3, ixrd2l, ixrd3l, ixrd5, ixrh2 and ixrh3, which correspond to a hardware variant of Nokia 7220 IXR chassis.

Nokia 7250 IXR chassis identified with types ixr6e and ixr10e require a valid license to boot.

If type is not set in the clab file ixrd2 value will be used by containerlab.

Based on the provided type, containerlab will generate the topology file that will be mounted to the SR Linux container and make it boot in a chosen HW variant.

Node configuration#

SR Linux uses a /etc/opt/srlinux/config.json file to persist its configuration. By default, containerlab starts nodes of srl kind with a basic "default" config, and with the startup-config parameter, it is possible to provide a custom config file that will be used as a startup one.

Default node configuration#

When a node is defined without the startup-config statement present, containerlab will make additional configurations on top of the factory config:

# example of a topo file that does not define a custom startup-config
# as a result, the default configuration will be used by this node

name: srl_lab
topology:
  nodes:
    srl1:
      kind: srl
      type: ixrd3

The generated config will be saved by the path clab-<lab_name>/<node-name>/config/config.json. Using the example topology presented above, the exact path to the config will be clab-srl_lab/srl1/config/config.json.

Additional configurations that containerlab adds on top of the factory config:

• enabling interfaces (admin-state enable) referenced in the topology's links section
• enabling LLDP
• enabling gNMI/JSON-RPC
• creating tls server certificate

User defined startup config#

It is possible to make SR Linux nodes boot up with a user-defined config instead of a built-in one. With a startup-config property of the node/kind a user sets the path to the local config file that will be used as a startup config.

The startup configuration file can be provided in two formats:

• full SR Linux config in JSON format
• partial config in SR Linux CLI format

CLI#

A typical lab scenario is to make nodes boot with a pre-configured use case. The easiest way to do that is to capture the intended changes as CLI commands.

On SR Linux, users can configure the system and capture the changes in the form of CLI instructions using the info command. These CLI commands can be saved in a file³ and used as a startup configuration.

network-instance default {
    interface ethernet-1/1.0 {
    }
    interface ethernet-1/2.0 {
    }
    protocols {
        bgp {
            admin-state enable
            autonomous-system 65001
            router-id 10.0.0.1
            group rs {
                peer-as 65003
                ipv4-unicast {
                    admin-state enable
                }
            }
            neighbor 192.168.13.2 {
                peer-group rs
            }
        }
    }
}

set / network-instance default protocols bgp admin-state enable
set / network-instance default protocols bgp router-id 10.10.10.1
set / network-instance default protocols bgp autonomous-system 65001
set / network-instance default protocols bgp group ibgp ipv4-unicast admin-state enable
set / network-instance default protocols bgp group ibgp export-policy export-lo
set / network-instance default protocols bgp neighbor 192.168.1.2 admin-state enable
set / network-instance default protocols bgp neighbor 192.168.1.2 peer-group ibgp
set / network-instance default protocols bgp neighbor 192.168.1.2 peer-as 65001

name: srl_lab
topology:
  nodes:
    srl1:
      kind: srl
      type: ixrd3
      image: ghcr.io/nokia/srlinux
      # a path to the partial config in CLI format relative to the current working directory
      startup-config: myconfig.cli

In that case, SR Linux will first boot with the default configuration, and then the CLI commands from the myconfig.cli will be applied. Note, that no entering into the candidate config, nor explicit commit is required to be part of the CLI configuration snippets.

JSON#

SR Linux persists its configuration as a JSON file that can be found by the /etc/opt/srlinux/config.json path. Users can use this file as a startup configuration like that:

name: srl_lab
topology:
  nodes:
    srl1:
      kind: srl
      type: ixrd3
      image: ghcr.io/nokia/srlinux
      # a path to the full config in JSON format relative to the current working directory
      startup-config: myconfig.json

Containerlab will take the myconfig.json file, copy it to the lab directory for that specific node under the config.json name, and mount that directory to the container. This will result in this config acting as a startup-config for the node.

Saving configuration#

As was explained in the Node configuration section, SR Linux containers can make their config persistent because config files are provided to the containers from the host via the bind mount.

When a user configures the SR Linux node, the changes are saved into the running configuration stored in memory. To save the running configuration as a startup configuration, the user needs to execute the tools system configuration save CLI command. This command will write the config to the /etc/opt/srlinux/config.json file that holds the startup-config and is exposed to the host.

SR Linux node also supports the containerlab save -t <topo-file> command, which will execute the command to save the running-config on all lab nodes. For SR Linux node, the tools system configuration save will be executed:

❯ containerlab save -t quickstart.clab.yml
INFO[0000] Parsing & checking topology file: quickstart.clab.yml
INFO[0001] saved SR Linux configuration from leaf1 node. Output:
/system:
    Saved current running configuration as initial (startup) configuration '/etc/opt/srlinux/config.json'

INFO[0001] saved SR Linux configuration from leaf2 node. Output:
/system:
    Saved current running configuration as initial (startup) configuration '/etc/opt/srlinux/config.json'

User defined custom agents for SR Linux nodes#

SR Linux supports custom "agents", i.e. small independent pieces of software that extend the functionality of the core platform and integrate with the CLI and the rest of the system. To deploy an agent, a YAML configuration file must be placed under /etc/opt/srlinux/appmgr/. This feature adds the ability to copy agent YAML file(s) to the config directory of a specific SRL node, or all such nodes.

name: srl_lab_with_custom_agents
topology:
  nodes:
    srl1:
      kind: srl
      ...
      extras:
        srl-agents:
        - path1/my_custom_agent.yml
        - path2/my_other_agent.yml

TLS#

By default, containerlab will generate TLS certificates and keys for each SR Linux node of a lab. The TLS-related files that containerlab creates are located in the TLS directory, which can be found by the <lab-directory>/.tls/ path. Here is a list of files that containerlab creates relative to the TLS directory:

1. CA certificate - ./ca/ca.pem
2. CA private key - ./ca/ca.key
3. Node certificate - ./<node-name>/<node-name>.pem
4. Node private key - ./<node-name>/<node-name>.key

The generated TLS files will persist between lab deployments. This means that if you destroyed a lab and deployed it again, the TLS files from the initial lab deployment will be used.

In case user-provided certificates/keys need to be used, the ca.pem, <node-name>.pem and <node-name>.key files must be copied by the paths outlined above for containerlab to take them into account when deploying a lab.

In case only ca.pem and ca.key files are provided, the node certificates will be generated using these CA files.

Nokia SR Linux nodes support setting of SANs.

License#

SR Linux container can run without a license .
In that license-less mode, the datapath is limited to 1000 PPS and the sr_linux process will restart once a week.

The license file lifts these limitations and a path to it can be provided with license directive.

Container configuration#

To start an SR Linux NOS containerlab uses the configuration that is described in SR Linux Software Installation Guide

net.ipv4.ip_forward = "0"
net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6 = "0"
net.ipv6.conf.all.accept_dad = "0"
net.ipv6.conf.default.accept_dad = "0"
net.ipv6.conf.all.autoconf = "0"
net.ipv6.conf.default.autoconf = "0"

File mounts#

When a user starts a lab, containerlab creates a lab directory for storing configuration artifacts. For srl kind, containerlab creates directories for each node of that kind.

~/clab/clab-srl02
❯ ls -lah srl1
drwxrwxrwx+ 6 1002 1002   87 Dec  1 22:11 config
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  233 Dec  1 22:11 topology.clab.yml

The config directory is mounted to container's /etc/opt/srlinux/ path in rw mode. It will contain configuration that SR Linux runs of as well as the files that SR Linux keeps in its /etc/opt/srlinux/ directory:

❯ ls srl1/config
banner  cli  config.json  devices  tls  ztp

The topology file that defines the emulated hardware type is driven by the value of the kinds type parameter. Depending on a specified type, the appropriate content will be populated into the topology.yml file that will get mounted to /tmp/topology.yml directory inside the container in ro mode.

authorized keys#

Additionally, containerlab will mount the authorized_keys file that will have contents of every public key found in ~/.ssh directory as well as the contents of a ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file if it exists². This file will be mounted to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys path for the following users:

• root
• linuxadmin
• admin

This will enable passwordless access for the users above if any public key is found in the user's directory.

Host Requirements#

SR Linux is a containerized NOS, therefore it depends on the host's kernel and CPU. It is recommended to run a kernel v4 and newer, though it might also run on the older kernels.

SSSE3 CPU set#

SR Linux XDP - the emulated datapath based on DPDK - requires SSSE3 instructions to be available. This instruction set is present on most modern CPUs, but it is missing in the basic emulated CPUs created by hypervisors like QEMU, Proxmox. When this instruction set is not present in the host CPU set, containerlab will abort the lab deployment if it has SR Linux nodes defined.

The easiest way to enable SSSE3 instruction set is to configure the hypervisor to use the host CPU type, which exposes all available instructions to the guest. For Proxmox, this can be set in the GUI:

Or it's also possible via the proxmox configuration file /etc/pve/qemu-server/vmid.conf.