[Xorp-hackers] Interfacing for runtime config

[Weaver John-JWEAVER1]

What about SNMP?  Can everything be configured through SNMP?  Does this also
get reflected in the xorpsh? 

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Handley [mailto:mark.j.handley@gmail.com] 
Sent: Thursday, August 25, 2005 1:26 PM
To: Weaver John-JWEAVER1
Cc: Pavlin Radoslavov; xorp-hackers@icir.org
Subject: Re: [Xorp-hackers] Interfacing for runtime config

On 8/25/05, Weaver John-JWEAVER1 <John.Weaver@motorola.com> wrote:
> So I guess there is no library that I can just make calls to pass just 
> address and interface info?  I was not looking forward to piecing 
> something together and scripting it.

We could build a library version of xorpsh that you would link against, and
which would present a programatic interface for changing the config.  So far
we haven't done this because you can do this from a scripting language with
the existing xorpsh, and because it's not clear what the user-based security
model would be.

Now, such an API would still know nothing about interfaces, vifs, etc.
 Bear in mind that in the XORP architecture, the rtrmgr and xorpsh have *no*
inbuilt knowledge about the components they are managing and configuring.
This knowledge comes from the template files that are read at runtime.

An alternative would be for the FEA to provide a programatic library for
configuring interfaces, but by itself this gives you nothing you can't
already access using XRLs.  The downside is that the rtrmgr would not learn
about the interfaces, so you couldn't use xorpsh to monitor them, etc.

Finally, and what I think you want, it would be possible to build a helper
library than can configure interfaces (via XRLs to the FEA) and then tell
the rtrmgr about them (using the same XRL interface that xorpsh uses).  This
might be worth doing.  Normally we've avoided building such helpers because
you can always code them yourself using XRLs.  However in this case the
requirement may be common enough, and actually coding it yourself may be
hard enough that it may well be worth doing.

 - Mark