[ixpmanager] Route Server Installation

[Sam Malyon]

Hey Barry,

Thanks for that makes significantly more sense, so I'm assuming that a web server of some description is required to run on the Bird server for IXP Manager to be able to access the file downloaded to the route server? And where should it be placed? (just for sanities sake.)

Kind Regards,

Samuel Malyon
Network Operations


THIS EMAIL IS INTENDED FOR THE USE OF THE ADDRESSEE and may contain information that is privileged and confidential.  If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any use, dissemination, distribution or reproduction of this email or the contained information is strictly prohibited.   IF YOU HAVE RECEIVED THIS EMAIL IN ERROR, please notify the sender by return email and destroy all copies of the original message.   THIS CORPORATE EMAIL SYSTEM IS FOR BUSINESS USE ONLY.  Information may be monitored and recorded, and offensive, inappropriate or illegal material will not be tolerated.   Except as required by law, THIS COMPANY DOES NOT REPRESENT, WARRANT AND/OR GUARANTEE that the integrity of this email has been maintained nor that the communication is free of errors, virus, interception or interference.   If you would prefer not to receive further messages from this sender, please notify us by sending one return email with the word ‘unsubscribe’ in the subject line.   You will receive one additional e-mail message confirming your removal from our e-database.


-----Original Message-----
From: Barry O'Donovan <barry.odonovan at inex.ie> 
Sent: Monday, 30 March 2020 8:05 PM
To: INEX IXP Manager Users Mailing List <ixpmanager at inex.ie>; Sam Malyon <Sam at commsphere.com.au>
Subject: Re: [ixpmanager] Route Server Installation

Hi Sam,

Sam Malyon wrote on 29/03/2020 15:34:
> I’m having issues installing the route server as I have never actually 
> used Bird before.
> 
> So I have completed the router config on IXP Manager (Excluding the 
> API details). And installed bird using “apt-get install bird” but 
> after that I have no idea how to connect it to IXP Manager. I haven’t 
> yet installed Birdseye.
> 
> Any Suggestions on what I should do here as I’m lost?

Bird as a route server and Birdseye are separate components and you do not /need/ to install Birdseye but we would strongly recommend it. You should have a look at some of out talks from 2019 on this stuff at:

https://www.ixpmanager.org/presentations

The one from UKNOF is probably the most recent and best (although the slides didn't work at the beginning which is why it's a bit rough there 😉).

IXP Manager will configure Bird for three purposes: route servers, route collectors and an AS112 service. As such, the documentation is split a little. The most important one is:

https://docs.ixpmanager.org/features/routers/

and particularly the section 'Configuration Generation Overview'.

Then you should look at the route server specific stuff on:

https://docs.ixpmanager.org/features/route-servers/

I take it from your offlist email that you have Bird installed and you're trying to figure out out it connects to IXP Manager. That is covered in the specific section I mentioned above. We have sample scripts for this which you can find here:

https://github.com/inex/IXP-Manager/tree/master/tools/runtime/route-servers

and specifically:

https://github.com/inex/IXP-Manager/blob/master/tools/runtime/route-servers/api-reconfigure-example-birdv2.sh


You will need to download that to your route server and then edit the settings at the top:

KEY="your-api-key"
URL="https://ixp.example.com/ixp/api/v4/router/gen-config"
URL_DONE="https://ixp.example.com/ixp/api/v4/router/updated"
ETCPATH="/usr/local/etc/bird"
RUNPATH="/var/run/bird"
LOGPATH="/var/log/bird"
BIN="/usr/sbin/bird"

You can create an API key per:

https://docs.ixpmanager.org/features/api/

The URLs reflect wherever the script can access IXP Manager via http(s).

Once that's all set, you can run it in debugging mode via:

bash ./api-reconfigure-example-birdv2.sh -d <handle>

where '<handle>' is the handle you gave the route server when adding it via the form in IXP Manager. E.g.

bash ./api-reconfigure-example-birdv2.sh -d rs1-ipv4


Once you have the route server running, you can then turn to Birdseye which integrates into IXP Manager for monitoring and looking glass features. That's documented at:

https://docs.ixpmanager.org/features/looking-glass/

https://github.com/inex/birdseye/blob/master/README.md


  - Barry