Changes in Release 1.6

New Functionality

Release 1.6.4

Platform enhancements:

  • Add BFD for BGP neighbors, remove-private-as option, and passive BGP peers support for Arista EOS, Cisco IOSv, Cisco IOS/XE, Cumulus Linux and FRR

  • Add bgp.policy support for Arista EOS, Cisco IOSv, Cisco IOS/XE, Cumulus Linux and FRR

  • Add bgp.session, bgp.policy and ebgp.multihop support for Aruba AOS-CX (contributed by Stefano Sasso)

  • Add ebgp.multihop support for SR Linux and SR OS (contributed by Jeroem van Bemmel)

  • Add BFD for OSPFv2, OSPFv3 and BGP on FRR

  • bgp.session: add BGP timers, BFD, passive BGP peer, and remove-private-as support for Nokia SR Linux (1.6.4-post2)

  • Add bgp.policy support for Nokia SR Linux (1.6.4-post2)

  • bgp.session: implement BFD, BGP timers and passive BGP for vMX, vSRX, and vPTX (1.6.4-post3)

  • MPLS: Add 6PE and BGP-LU for Nokia SR OS (1.6.4-post3)

New plugin functionality:

  • Add _requires metadata to handle mandatory plugin dependencies

  • Use _config_name plugin metadata instead of API call

  • Sort loaded plugins based on their dependencies documented in _execute_after metadata

  • Implement plugin redirect (used to rename ebgp.utils to bgp.session)

  • Accept __init__.py as a replacement for plugin.py in directory-based plugins

Documentation improvements:

Release 1.6.3

Documentation improvements

Release 1.6.2

Release 1.6.1

Internal changes:

Release 1.6.0

New commands:

New reports:

The reports you can create with the netlab report command include:

  • Node, interface and link addressing reports

  • Lab wiring summary

  • Device management IP addresses, usernames, and passwords

Explore netlab internals

The netlab show command can display:

  • Configuration modules and optional features supported by individual modules

  • Configuration modules and features supported by individual devices

  • Virtualization providers and their status

  • Output modules that can be used with the netlab create command

  • System reports you can use with netlab report command

External connectivity:

Other new features:

  • Improved FRR VXLAN data plane configuration

  • OSPF strict BFD support (RFC 9355)

  • Nokia SR OS OSPF P2MP support

  • Add mgmt._permanent option to make vagrant-libvirt management network persistent (fixes #855)

Documentation improvements:

  • Document Linux loopback interface usage

  • Document assignment of management IP addresses in libvirt and containerlab environments

  • Rewrite documentation for external provider and multi-provider topologies

Internal changes:

  • Use device features instead of module supported_on lists to specify modules supported by individual devices

  • Device settings inheritance should make it easier to add similar devices. It has been implemented for most device types, including a new Junos meta-device (the parent for vSRX, vMX and vPTX devices).

Breaking changes:

  • get_from_box function has been removed

Breaking changes

Release 1.6.1

netlab code stopped using netsim.common module. That module should no longer be used, but is still included in the package in case some plugins still use it. We’ll remove the module in 1.7/2.0 release.

Release 1.6.0

  • get_from_box function has been removed. The function might be used by early plugins which will break when ran with netlab release 1.6.0. Update your plugins to use Box get method which supports hierarchical names since version 7.0 (more details)

Bug Fixes

Bug Fixes in release 1.6.4-post3

  • netlab install scripts have to work when started as root user

  • Nokia SR OS: Fix missing macro parameter ‘name’

  • Minor tweaks to Nokia SR Linux template

  • Move Nokia SROS interface naming logic to initial.j2 if_name macro

  • Nokia SR OS initial configuration: fix quoting of “[null]” value

  • Enable BFD for Junos devices

Bug Fixes in Release 1.6.4-post2

  • Set BGP address family flags based on interface BGP advertisement status (fixes #929)

  • Create BGP reports even when a router has no neighbors

  • Group error messages should be f-strings

  • vPTX box building script should run make-config.sh as root

  • Fix a typo breaking Virtualbox FRR support (#920)

Bug Fixes in Release 1.6.4-post1

  • bgp.policy plugin removes bgp.session data from BGP neighbors

Bug Fixes in Release 1.6.4

  • Use management VRF with Arista cEOS

  • Cosmetic fix: align table header columns in BGP reports

  • Sort custom configurations to speed up ‘netlab initial’

  • Add typing tests of ‘extra’ plugins to the CI/CD tests

  • Rewrite bgp.session plugin to use BGP neighbor generators

  • Make ‘loading plugins’ error messages easier to understand

  • Add jQuery to documentation pages

  • Clear BGP sessions after changing BGP timers in bgp.session plugin

  • FRR VM crashed when initializing an Ethernet stub network

  • Stop mypy CI/CD tests on first error

Bug Fixes in Release 1.6.3

  • Add tunnel interface names to Cumulus/FRR settings to support ebgp.multihop

  • Tweak Cisco IOS NSF timers to speed up initial BGP convergence

  • Use a hint when reporting ‘missing global AS’ in EVPN module

  • Throw an error if a group definition is empty (None)

  • Use relevant link names when transforming link lists from components or BGP multihop sessions

  • Prettify the ‘cannot load plugin’ error message

  • Make bgp.no_propagate setting extendable

  • Consistently use _vlan_mode attribute throughout the VLAN module

  • A few minor fixes for SR OS MPLS configs

  • Propagate node VLAN mode into link ‘interfaces’ early enough to matter

  • ECMP Fixes for 7250 IXR

  • Allow only ‘route’ value for link/interface-level vlan.mode attribute

  • Use node-level vlan.mode when copying global VLAN data into node VLAN data

  • Remove remote neighbor attributes in ebgp.utils

  • Implement feature checks in ebgp.utils plugin

  • Rewrite ‘ebgp.utils’ plugin to use the plugin defaults functionality

  • Implement ‘copy attribute definition’ functionality and use it for plugin defaults

  • Add linux-modules-extra to ubuntu install script (#873)

  • Make ‘netlab test’ command more resilient

  • Workaround: Nokia Ansible collection crashes with Ansible 5.x and later

  • Copy only mandatory attributes from PHY to VLAN interface

  • Wiring report fixes

Bug Fixes in Release 1.6.2

  • Fix EVPN VLAN attributes (#865)

  • Bump clab version to 0.44.3 (#864)

  • BGP reports should survive topologies with no BGP in them

  • ‘netlab show reports’ skips include files in reports directory

  • Migrate simple VRF integration tests to the new “links-in-vrfs” format

Bug Fixes in Release 1.6.1

  • Python package manifest (MANIFEST.in) did not include show-usage.txt (the help file for netlab show command)

  • Collect Cumulus Linux interface configuration with ifquery

  • ifquery has to be executed as root on Cumulus Linux

Bug Fixes in Release 1.6.0

  • Allow ‘mgmt’ attributes in node data

  • Change pinned containerlab version to the one supporting macvlan endpoints

  • Create system-wide virsh networks during ‘netlab up’

  • Fix a typo in a BGP attribute type

  • Update SRv6 module to use new dictionary-based attribute definition

Documentation Fixes

Documentation Fixes in Release 1.6.4-post3

  • Outdated link in Ubuntu VM installation documentation

  • Display version-specific topology file used to start a lab

  • There’s no release 1.5.5

Documentation Fixes in Release 1.6.4-post2

  • Add ‘use /tmp on Ubuntu 22.04’ to box building instructions

  • Document further problems with vPTX DHCP client

  • We’re not recommending using pip3 as root (fixes #923)

  • More HTML anchors for platform support tables

Documentation Fixes in Release 1.6.2

  • Rewrote confusing introduction to BGP configuration module platform feature support

  • Fix a ‘device image default’ example that contained invalid container name

Documentation Fixes in Release 1.6.1

  • Use consistent anchors in “netlab show” documentation

  • New Aruba download link