Once upon a time, far far away, there were the old Bird developers
discussing what direction of route flow shall be called import and
export. They decided to say "import to protocol" and "export to table"
when speaking about a protocol. When speaking about a table, they
spoke about "importing to table" and "exporting to protocol".
The latter terminology was adopted in configuration, then also the
bird CLI in commit ea2ae6dd0 started to use it (in year 2009). Now
it's 2018 and the terminology is the latter. Import is from protocol to
table, export is from table to protocol. Anyway, there was still an
import_control hook which executed right before route export.
One thing is funny. There are two commits in April 1999 with just two
minutes between them. The older announces the final settlement
on config terminology, the newer uses the other definition. Let's see
their commit messages as the git-log tool shows them (the newer first):
commit 9e0e485e50
Author: Martin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>
Date: Mon Apr 5 20:17:59 1999 +0000
Added some new protocol hooks (look at the comments for better explanation):
make_tmp_attrs Convert inline attributes to ea_list
store_tmp_attrs Convert ea_list to inline attributes
import_control Pre-import decisions
commit 5056c559c4
Author: Martin Mares <mj@ucw.cz>
Date: Mon Apr 5 20:15:31 1999 +0000
Changed syntax of attaching filters to protocols to hopefully the final
version:
EXPORT <filter-spec> for outbound routes (i.e., those announced
by BIRD to the rest of the world).
IMPORT <filter-spec> for inbound routes (i.e., those imported
by BIRD from the rest of the world).
where <filter-spec> is one of:
ALL pass all routes
NONE drop all routes
FILTER <name> use named filter
FILTER { <filter> } use explicitly defined filter
For all protocols, the default is IMPORT ALL, EXPORT NONE. This includes
the kernel protocol, so that you need to add EXPORT ALL to get the previous
configuration of kernel syncer (as usually, see doc/bird.conf.example for
a bird.conf example :)).
Let's say RIP to this almost 19-years-old inconsistency. For now, if you
import a route, it is always from protocol to table. If you export a
route, it is always from table to protocol.
And they lived happily ever after.
The new MRT protocol is responsible for periodic RIB table dumps in the
MRT format (RFC 6396). Also the existing code for BGP4MP MRT dumps is
refactored and splitted between BGP to MRT protocols, will be more
integrated into MRT in the future.
Example:
protocol mrt {
table "*";
filename "%N_%F_%T.mrt";
period 60;
}
It is partially based on the old MRT code from Pavel Tvrdik.
If export filter is changed during reconfiguration and a route disappears
between reconfiguration and refeed (e.g., if the route is a static route
also removed during the reconfiguration), the route is not withdrawn.
The patch fixes that by adding tx reconfiguration timestamp.
This is a fundamental change of an original (1999) concept of route
processing inside BIRD. During import/export, there was a temporary
ea_list created which was to be used instead of the another one inside
the route itself.
This led to some confusion, quirks, and strange filter code that handled
extended route attributes. Dropping it now.
The protocol interface has changed in an uniform way -- the
`struct ea_list *attrs` argument has been removed from store_tmp_attrs(),
import_control(), rt_notify() and get_route_info().
The patch implements BGP Administrative Shutdown Communication (RFC 8203)
allowing BGP operators to pass messages related to BGP session
administrative shutdown/restart. It handles both transmit and receive of
shutdown messages. Messages are logged and may be displayed by show
protocol all command.
Thanks to Job Snijders for the basic patch.
Add basic VRF (virtual routing and forwarding) support. Protocols can be
associated with VRFs, such protocols will be restricted to interfaces
assigned to the VRF (as reported by Linux kernel) and will use sockets
bound to the VRF. E.g., different multihop BGP instances can use diffent
kernel routing tables to handle BGP TCP connections.
The VRF support is preliminary, currently there are several limitations:
- Recent Linux kernels (4.11) do not handle correctly sockets bound
to interaces that are part of VRF, so most protocols other than multihop
BGP do not work. This will be fixed by future kernel versions.
- Neighbor cache ignores VRFs. Breaks config with the same prefix on
local interfaces in different VRFs. Not much problem as single hop
protocols do not work anyways.
- Olock code ignores VRFs. Breaks config with multiple BGP peers with the
same IP address in different VRFs.
- Incoming BGP connections are not dispatched according to VRFs.
Breaks config with multiple BGP peers with the same IP address in
different VRFs. Perhaps we would need some kernel API to read VRF of
incoming connection? Or probably use multiple listening sockets in
int-new branch.
- We should handle master VRF interface up/down events and perhaps
disable associated protocols when VRF goes down. Or at least disable
associated interfaces.
- Also we should check if the master iface is really VRF iface and
not some other kind of master iface.
- BFD session request dispatch should be aware of VRFs.
- Perhaps kernel protocol should read default kernel table ID from VRF
iface so it is not necessary to configure it.
- Perhaps we should have per-VRF default table.
Some code cleanup, multiple bugfixes, allows to specify also channel
for 'show route export'. Interesting how such apparenty simple thing
like show route cmd has plenty of ugly corner cases.
Also removed the lib-dir merging with sysdep. Updated #include's
accordingly.
Fixed make doc on recent Debian together with moving generated doc into
objdir.
Moved Makefile.in into root dir
Retired all.o and birdlib.a
Linking the final binaries directly from all the .o files.
This patch implements the IPv6 subset of the Babel routing protocol.
Based on the patch from Toke Hoiland-Jorgensen, with some heavy
modifications and bugfixes.
Thanks to Toke Hoiland-Jorgensen for the original patch.
Many protocols do almost the same when creating a rte_update request
before calling rte_update2(). This commit should simplify the protocol
side of the route-creation routine.
The patch adds support for channels, structures connecting protocols and
tables and handling most interactions between them. The documentation is
missing yet.
When 'import keep rejected' protocol option is activated, routes
rejected by the import filter are kept in the routing table, but they
are hidden and not propagated to other protocols. It is possible to
examine them using 'show route rejected'.
Allows to send and receive multiple routes for one network by one BGP
session. Also contains necessary core changes to support this (routing
tables accepting several routes for one network from one protocol).
It needs some more cleanup before merging to the master branch.
When a protocol went down, all its routes were flushed in one step, that
may block BIRD for too much time. The patch fixes that by limiting
maximum number of routes flushed in one step.
The nest-protocol interaction is changed to better handle multitable
protocols. Multitable protocols now declare that by 'multitable' field,
which tells nest that a protocol handles things related to proto-rtable
interaction (table locking, announce hook adding, reconfiguration of
filters) itself.
Filters and stats are moved to announce hooks, a protocol could have
different filters and stats to different tables.
The patch is based on one from Alexander V. Chernikov, thanks.
