Adding ports with no links to them

[teunvink]

I assumed this would be a better place to ask than to open an issue (though it may result in a feature request):

What I'm trying to achieve is to create a virtual copy of my physical spine/leaf setup which we use in our data centers. Creating the cEOS containers and the links between them is easy with containerlab (thank you! this is so much easier to use than docker-topo). However, I'd like to add all server/customer facing ports of all switches to these containers as well, so that I can run ansible playbooks for provisioning and changing configurations on them.

As far as I can tell, there's no way of adding all these ports without linking them to some other port. And that would make the setup needlessly complex. I'd like to be able to have these ports available on the switches, even though there's not a device connected to them.

[hellt]

a perfect place for questions, you are right.

in cEOS (and other containerized NOSes to my knowledge) you have to have a present interface for NOS to create a matching interface. There is not way around this, it seems.

What you can do, though, is to shunt those interfaces, making them dummy. A common thing would be to create a dummy linux bridge, which you can call br-dummy and then define your topology smth like that:

topology:
  nodes:
    ceos1:
    ceos2:
    br-dummy:
      kind: bridge

  links:
    - endpoints: ["ceos1:eth1", "ceos2:eth1"]
    - endpoints: ["ceos1:eth2", "br-dummy:ceos1-eth2"]
    - endpoints: ["ceos1:eth3", "br-dummy:ceos1-eth3"]
    - endpoints: ["ceos1:eth4", "br-dummy:ceos1-eth4"]

that adds some text in your clab file, but it effectively solves the issue with ports being created by cEOS and available for config.

Will that work for you?

[teunvink]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried creating a bridge in linux (brctl addbr br-dummy) and testing the config you mentioned above, but I still fail to deploy the lab:

INFO[0008] Creating virtual wire: ceos1:eth1 <--> ceos2:eth1
INFO[0008] Creating virtual wire: ceos1:eth2 <--> br-dummy:ceos1-eth2
INFO[0008] Creating virtual wire: ceos1:eth4 <--> br-dummy:ceos1-eth4
INFO[0008] Creating virtual wire: ceos1:eth3 <--> br-dummy:ceos1-eth3
ERRO[0008] could not lookup "ceos1": Link not found
ERRO[0008] could not lookup "ceos1": Link not found
ERRO[0008] could not lookup "ceos1": Link not found

Do I need to create the dummy interfaces as well? Or is there something else I'm forgetting?

[hellt]

No, you're doing all good, it's just that you're a hitting a regression introduced in 0.13.0 It's been fixed, but not released yet The workaround is to define your bridge interface first in the endpoint section and then the CEOS

…

On Thu, 22 Apr 2021 at 14:38, Teun Vink ***@***.***> wrote: Thanks for the suggestion. I tried creating a bridge in linux (brctl addbr br-dummy) and testing the config you mentioned above, but I still fail to deploy the lab: INFO[0008] Creating virtual wire: ceos1:eth1 <--> ceos2:eth1 INFO[0008] Creating virtual wire: ceos1:eth2 <--> br-dummy:ceos1-eth2 INFO[0008] Creating virtual wire: ceos1:eth4 <--> br-dummy:ceos1-eth4 INFO[0008] Creating virtual wire: ceos1:eth3 <--> br-dummy:ceos1-eth3 ERRO[0008] could not lookup "ceos1": Link not found ERRO[0008] could not lookup "ceos1": Link not found ERRO[0008] could not lookup "ceos1": Link not found Do I need to create the dummy interfaces as well? Or is there something else I'm forgetting? — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#395 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/ABLKV5NM2KP2EIL2KBBICSTTKAKETANCNFSM43LCOP6Q> .

[hellt]

like this

- endpoints: ["br-client:l1-e1-5", "leaf1:e1-5"]

[teunvink]

Thanks, that works like a charm! I really appreciate the quick responses!