BIRD User's Guide: Remote control

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## 4. Remote control

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).

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:

`dump resources|sockets|interfaces|neighbors|attributes|routes|protocols`

  Dump contents of internal data structures to the debugging output.

`show status`

  Show router status, that is BIRD version, uptime and time from last reconfiguration.

`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 [name]`

  Show detailed information about OSPF areas based on a content of link-state database. It shows network topology, aggregated networks and routers from other areas and external routes.

`show ospf topology [name]`

  Show a topology of OSPF areas based on a content of link-state database. It is just a stripped-down version of 'show ospf state'.

`show static [name]`

  Show detailed information about static routes.

`show interfaces [summary]`

  Show the list of interfaces. For each interface, print its type, state, MTU and addresses assigned.

`show symbols`

  Show the list of symbols defined in the configuration (names of protocols, routing tables etc.).

`show route [[for] prefix|IP] [table sym] [filter f|where c] [(export|preexport) p] [protocol p] [options]`

  Show contents of a routing table (by default of the main one), 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` and `preexport` switches ask for printing of entries that are exported to the specified protocol. With `preexport`, the export filter of the protocol is skipped.

  You can also select just routes added by a specific protocol. `protocol p`.

  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.

`configure [soft] ["config file"]`

  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.

`enable|disable|restart name|"pattern"|all`

  Enable, disable or restart a given protocol instance, instances matching the `pattern` or `all` instances.

`reload [in|out] name|"pattern"|all`

  Reload 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).

`down`

  Shut BIRD down.

`debug protocol|pattern|all all|off|{ states | routes | filters | events | packets }`

  Control protocol debugging.

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