Display Running Lab Instances

netlab status command displays the running lab instances and the provider-specific workloads (libvirt virtual machines or containerlab containers).

This command uses the netlab status file (default: ~/.netlab/status.yml) to get the state of running lab instances. The status file is updated by netlab up and netlab down commands.

Usage

$ netlab status -h
usage: netlab status [-h] [-i INSTANCE] [-l] [--cleanup] [--reset] [--all] [-v] [-q]

Display lab status

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i INSTANCE, --instance INSTANCE
                        Display or cleanup specific lab instance(s)
  -l, --log             Display the lab instance event log
  --cleanup             Cleanup the current or specified lab instance
  --reset               Reset the lab instance tracking system
  --all                 Display an overview of all lab instance(s)
  -v, --verbose         Verbose logging (add multiple flags for increased verbosity)
  -q, --quiet           Report only major errors

• netlab status displays the status and workload (VMs or containers) of the current or selected lab instance.

• netlab status –all displays an overview of all currently running lab instances.

• netlab status –log displays detailed status log (including state changes and executed commands) of the current- or selected lab instance(s)

• netlab status –cleanup shuts down selected lab instance(s). It changes the current directory to the lab directory saved in the status file and executes netlab down –cleanup in that directory

• netlab status –reset deletes the status file. Use this command only if the status file becomes corrupted.

Display Lab Instance State

The netlab status command displays the selected lab instance and its VMs and containers:

Lab default in /home/user/net101/tools/X
  status: started
  provider(s): clab

┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ node    ┃ device ┃ image                       ┃ mgmt IPv4       ┃ connection ┃ provider ┃ VM/container   ┃ status       ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ host-1  │ linux  │ python:3.9-alpine           │ 192.168.121.107 │ docker     │ clab     │ clab-X-host-1  │ Up 4 minutes │
├─────────┼────────┼─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼──────────┼────────────────┼──────────────┤
│ host-2  │ linux  │ python:3.9-alpine           │ 192.168.121.108 │ docker     │ clab     │ clab-X-host-2  │ Up 4 minutes │
├─────────┼────────┼─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼──────────┼────────────────┼──────────────┤
│ leaf-1  │ frr    │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:9.1.0 │ 192.168.121.101 │ docker     │ clab     │ clab-X-leaf-1  │ Up 4 minutes │
├─────────┼────────┼─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼──────────┼────────────────┼──────────────┤
│ leaf-2  │ frr    │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:9.1.0 │ 192.168.121.102 │ docker     │ clab     │ clab-X-leaf-2  │ Up 4 minutes │
├─────────┼────────┼─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼──────────┼────────────────┼──────────────┤
│ leaf-3  │ frr    │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:9.1.0 │ 192.168.121.103 │ docker     │ clab     │ clab-X-leaf-3  │ Up 4 minutes │
├─────────┼────────┼─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼──────────┼────────────────┼──────────────┤
│ leaf-4  │ frr    │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:9.1.0 │ 192.168.121.104 │ docker     │ clab     │ clab-X-leaf-4  │ Up 4 minutes │
├─────────┼────────┼─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼──────────┼────────────────┼──────────────┤
│ spine-1 │ frr    │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:9.1.0 │ 192.168.121.105 │ docker     │ clab     │ clab-X-spine-1 │ Up 4 minutes │
├─────────┼────────┼─────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼────────────┼──────────┼────────────────┼──────────────┤
│ spine-2 │ frr    │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:9.1.0 │ 192.168.121.106 │ docker     │ clab     │ clab-X-spine-2 │ Up 4 minutes │
└─────────┴────────┴─────────────────────────────┴─────────────────┴────────────┴──────────┴────────────────┴──────────────┘

Display Lab Instance Log

The netlab status –log command displays a detailed lab instance log, including state changes and executed commands:

$ netlab status --log
Lab default in /home/pipi/net101/tools/X
  status: started
  provider(s): clab

2024-03-21T15:49:53.405969+00:00: OK: containerlab version
2024-03-21T15:49:53.428919+00:00: OK: bash -c [[ `containerlab version|awk '/version/ {print $2}'` > '0.42' ]] && echo OK
2024-03-21T15:49:53.430807+00:00: restarting lab
2024-03-21T15:49:53.432369+00:00: starting provider clab
2024-03-21T15:49:56.009208+00:00: OK: sudo -E containerlab deploy -t clab.yml
2024-03-21T15:49:56.011297+00:00: clab workload started
2024-03-21T15:49:56.014699+00:00: deploying initial configuration
2024-03-21T15:49:56.405222+00:00: deploying configuration: complete configuration
2024-03-21T15:50:01.851112+00:00: OK: ansible-playbook /home/pipi/net101/tools/netsim/ansible/initial-config.ansible
2024-03-21T15:50:01.893476+00:00: OK: netlab initial --no-message
2024-03-21T15:50:01.895433+00:00: initial configuration complete
2024-03-21T15:50:01.897105+00:00: started

Running Lab Instances

The netlab status –all command displays all running lab instances[1], their working directories, and the virtual machines (domains) and containers running on the current server.

$ netlab status --all
Active lab instance(s)

┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ id      ┃ directory                 ┃ status  ┃ providers ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ default │ /home/pipi/net101/tools/X │ started │ clab      │
└─────────┴───────────────────────────┴─────────┴───────────┘

Cleanup a Lab Instance

The netlab status cleanup instance command shuts down the specified lab instance:

$ netlab status --cleanup
Cleanup will remove lab instance "default" in /home/user/net101/tools/X. Are you sure? [y/n]y
Shutting down lab default in /home/user/net101/tools/X
Read transformed lab topology from snapshot file netlab.snapshot.yml

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CHECKING virtualization provider installation                                    │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
[SUCCESS] clab installed and working correctly

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ STOPPING clab nodes                                                              │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
INFO[0000] Parsing & checking topology file: clab.yml
INFO[0000] Destroying lab: X
INFO[0000] Removed container: clab-X-host-2
INFO[0000] Removed container: clab-X-spine-2
INFO[0000] Removed container: clab-X-leaf-3
INFO[0000] Removed container: clab-X-spine-1
INFO[0000] Removed container: clab-X-leaf-1
INFO[0001] Removed container: clab-X-leaf-2
INFO[0001] Removed container: clab-X-host-1
INFO[0001] Removed container: clab-X-leaf-4
INFO[0001] Removing containerlab host entries from /etc/hosts file

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CLEANUP configuration files                                                      │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
... removing clab.yml
... removing directory tree clab_files
... removing ansible.cfg
... removing hosts.yml
... removing directory tree group_vars
... removing directory tree host_vars
... removing netlab.snapshot.yml

---

[1]

You could run multiple lab instances on the same server if you’re using multilab plugin.