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Introduction

Infix - Linux <3 NETCONF

Welcome to Infix, your immutable, friendly, and secure operating system! On these pages you can find both user and developer documentation.

Most topics on configuring the system include CLI examples, but every setting, as well as status read-back from the operational datastore, is also possible to perform using NETCONF or RESTCONF. In fact, the Infix regression test system solely relies on NETCONF and RESTCONF.

Tip

The CLI documentation is also available from inside the CLI itself using the help command in admin-exec mode.

This document provides an introduction of key concepts, details how the system boots, including failure modes, and provides links to other documents for further study.

Command Line Interface

The command line interface (CLI, see-ell-i) is the traditional way of interacting with single network equipment like switches and routers. Today users have come to expect more advanced graphical GUIs, like a web interface, to manage a device or NETCONF-based tools that allow for managing entire fleets of installed equipment.

Nevertheless, when it comes to initial deployment and debugging, it is very useful to know how to navigate and use the CLI.

Info

For more information, see the CLI Introduction and the CLI Configuration Tutorial.

Key Concepts

The two modes in the CLI are the admin-exec and the configure context.

However, when logging in to the system, from the console port or SSH, you land in a standard UNIX shell, Bash. This is for advanced users and remote scripting purposes (production equipment):

    Run the command 'cli' for interactive OAM

    admin@example:~$

To enter the CLI, follow the instructions, for interactive Operations, Administration, and Management (OAM), type:

    admin@example:~$ cli
    admin@example:/>

The prompt, constructed from your username and the device's hostname, changes slightly. You are now in the admin-exec context of the CLI. Here you can inspect system status and do operations to debug networking issues, e.g. ping. You can also enter configure context by typing: configure followed by commands to set, edit, apply changes using leave, or abort and return to admin-exec.

Tip

If you haven't already, the CLI Introduction would be useful to skim through at this point.

Datastores

The system has several datastores (or files):

  • factory-config consists of a set of default configurations, some static and others generated per-device, e.g., a unique hostname and number of ports/interfaces. This file is generated at boot.
  • failure-config is also generated at boot, from the same YANG models as factory-config, and holds the system Fail Secure Mode
  • startup-config is created from factory-config at boot if it does not exist. It is loaded as the system configuration on each boot.
  • running-config is what is actively running on the system. If no changes have been made since the system booted, it is the same as startup-config.
  • candidate-config is created from running-config when entering the configure context. Any changes made here can be discarded (abort, rollback) or committed (commit, leave) to running-config.

Tip

Please see the Branding & Releases document for more in-depth information on how factory-config and failure-config can be adapted to different customer requirements. Including how you can override the generated versions of these files with plain per-product ones -- this may even protect against some of the failure modes below.