Automating BIRD configuration

[Toke Høiland-Jørgensen]

Matthias Merkel <matthias at boltn-hosting.com> writes:

> We're trying to integrate BIRD with our automated DDoS detection and
> mitigation system. For this we need a way to have our software create
> static routes (to be more exact blackholes) and add BGP communities to
> announcements.
>
> Is there any way to do using CLI or control socket or would we have to
> make the software modify the config file and reload BIRD?

You cannot modify individual configuration parameters from the
cli/control socket, you'll have to reload the config file. The model I
use for this (in my case to dynamically update BGP filters using bgpq3)
is to include additional configuration files from the main config. These
additional files contain configuration snippets; mainly variable
definitions with lists of networks. These are then used in filters
(defined in the main config) to implement the desired policy.

-Toke