You can use the command-line client birdc to talk with a running
BIRD. Communication is done using a bird.ctl UNIX domain socket (unless
changed with the -s option given to both the server and the client). The
commands can perform simple actions such as enabling/disabling of protocols,
telling BIRD to show various information, telling it to show routing table
filtered by filter, or asking BIRD to reconfigure. Press ? at any time to
get online help. Option -r can be used to enable a restricted mode of BIRD
client, which allows just read-only commands (show ...). Option -v can
be passed to the client, to make it dump numeric return codes along with the
messages. You do not necessarily need to use birdc to talk to BIRD, your
own applications could do that, too -- the format of communication between BIRD
and birdc is stable (see the programmer's documentation).
There is also lightweight variant of BIRD client called birdcl, which
does not support command line editing and history and has minimal dependencies.
This is useful for running BIRD in resource constrained environments, where
Readline library (required for regular BIRD client) is not available.
Many commands have the name of the protocol instance as an argument. This argument can be omitted if there exists only a single instance.
Here is a brief list of supported functions:
show statusShow router status, that is BIRD version, uptime and time from last reconfiguration.
show interfaces [summary]Show the list of interfaces. For each interface, print its type, state, MTU and addresses assigned.
show protocols [all]Show list of protocol instances along with tables they are connected to
and protocol status, possibly giving verbose information, if all is
specified.
show ospf interface [name] ["interface"]Show detailed information about OSPF interfaces.
show ospf neighbors [name] ["interface"]Show a list of OSPF neighbors and a state of adjacency to them.
show ospf state [all] [name]Show detailed information about OSPF areas based on a content of the
link-state database. It shows network topology, stub networks,
aggregated networks and routers from other areas and external routes.
The command shows information about reachable network nodes, use option
all to show information about all network nodes in the link-state
database.
show ospf topology [all] [name]Show a topology of OSPF areas based on a content of the link-state database. It is just a stripped-down version of 'show ospf state'.
show ospf lsadb [global | area id | link] [type num] [lsid id] [self | router id] [name] Show contents of an OSPF LSA database. Options could be used to filter entries.
show rip interfaces [name] ["interface"]Show detailed information about RIP interfaces.
show rip neighbors [name] ["interface"]Show a list of RIP neighbors and associated state.
show static [name]Show detailed information about static routes.
show bfd sessions [name]Show information about BFD sessions.
show symbols [table|filter|function|protocol|template|roa|symbol]Show the list of symbols defined in the configuration (names of protocols, routing tables etc.).
show route [[for] prefix|IP] [table t] [filter f|where c] [(export|preexport|noexport) p] [protocol p] [options]Show contents of a routing table (by default of the main one or the
table attached to a respective protocol), that is routes, their metrics
and (in case the all switch is given) all their attributes.
You can specify a prefix if you want to print routes for a
specific network. If you use for prefix or IP, you'll get
the entry which will be used for forwarding of packets to the given
destination. By default, all routes for each network are printed with
the selected one at the top, unless primary is given in which case
only the selected route is shown.
You can also ask for printing only routes processed and accepted by
a given filter (filter name or filter { filter } or matching a given condition (where condition).
The export, preexport and noexport switches ask for
printing of routes that are exported to the specified protocol.
With preexport, the export filter of the protocol is skipped.
With noexport, routes rejected by the export filter are printed
instead. Note that routes not exported to the protocol for other reasons
(e.g. secondary routes or routes imported from that protocol) are not
printed even with noexport.
You can also select just routes added by a specific protocol.
protocol p.
If BIRD is configured to keep filtered routes (see import keep
filtered option), you can show them instead of routes by using
filtered switch.
The stats switch requests showing of route statistics (the
number of networks, number of routes before and after filtering). If
you use count instead, only the statistics will be printed.
show roa [prefix | in prefix | for prefix] [as num] [table t]Show contents of a ROA table (by default of the first one). You can
specify a prefix to print ROA entries for a specific network. If you
use for prefix, you'll get all entries relevant for route
validation of the network prefix; i.e., ROA entries whose prefixes cover
the network prefix. Or you can use in prefix to get ROA
entries covered by the network prefix. You could also use as option
to show just entries for given AS.
add roa prefix max num as num [table t]Add a new ROA entry to a ROA table. Such entry is called dynamic compared to static entries specified in the config file. These dynamic entries survive reconfiguration.
delete roa prefix max num as num [table t]Delete the specified ROA entry from a ROA table. Only dynamic ROA
entries (i.e., the ones added by add roa command) can be deleted.
flush roa [table t]Remove all dynamic ROA entries from a ROA table.
configure [soft] ["config file"] [timeout [num]]Reload configuration from a given file. BIRD will smoothly switch itself to the new configuration, protocols are reconfigured if possible, restarted otherwise. Changes in filters usually lead to restart of affected protocols.
If soft option is used, changes in filters does not cause BIRD to
restart affected protocols, therefore already accepted routes (according
to old filters) would be still propagated, but new routes would be
processed according to the new filters.
If timeout option is used, config timer is activated. The new
configuration could be either confirmed using configure confirm
command, or it will be reverted to the old one when the config timer
expires. This is useful for cases when reconfiguration breaks current
routing and a router becomes inaccessible for an administrator. The
config timeout expiration is equivalent to configure undo
command. The timeout duration could be specified, default is 300 s.
configure confirmDeactivate the config undo timer and therefore confirm the current configuration.
configure undoUndo the last configuration change and smoothly switch back to the previous (stored) configuration. If the last configuration change was soft, the undo change is also soft. There is only one level of undo, but in some specific cases when several reconfiguration requests are given immediately in a row and the intermediate ones are skipped then the undo also skips them back.
configure check ["config file"]Read and parse given config file, but do not use it. useful for checking syntactic and some semantic validity of an config file.
enable|disable|restart name|"pattern"|allEnable, disable or restart a given protocol instance, instances matching
the pattern or all instances.
reload [in|out] name|"pattern"|allReload a given protocol instance, that means re-import routes from the
protocol instance and re-export preferred routes to the instance. If
in or out options are used, the command is restricted to one
direction (re-import or re-export).
This command is useful if appropriate filters have changed but the
protocol instance was not restarted (or reloaded), therefore it still
propagates the old set of routes. For example when configure soft
command was used to change filters.
Re-export always succeeds, but re-import is protocol-dependent and might
fail (for example, if BGP neighbor does not support route-refresh
extension). In that case, re-export is also skipped. Note that for the
pipe protocol, both directions are always reloaded together (in or
out options are ignored in that case).
downShut BIRD down.
debug protocol|pattern|all all|off|{ states|routes|filters|events|packets [, ...] }Control protocol debugging.
dump resources|sockets|interfaces|neighbors|attributes|routes|protocolsDump contents of internal data structures to the debugging output.
echo all|off|{ list of log classes } [ buffer-size ]Control echoing of log messages to the command-line output. See log option for a list of log classes.
eval exprEvaluate given expression.