BIRD 2.0.8

[Clemens Schrimpe]

Hej -

sorry for being late to the game (this thread), but $dayjob kept me busy - what else is new...


I have been an avid user of BIRD (1.x and 2.x) on the Ubiquiti platforms - on both major versions of "EdgeOS" and on both hardware platforms (Octeon → MIPS-BE and "the other" → MIPS-LE  (all EdgeRouter X models))

Yes, I am using the original EdgeOS, which is just-another-debian-distro, namely:

EdgeOS 1 → Debian 7.11 with "3.10.107-UBNT #1 SMP Fri Feb 21 09:19:25 UTC 2020 mips64 GNU/Linux" kernel and

EdgeOS 2 → Debian 9.12 with "4.9.79-UBNT #1 SMP Thu Mar 5 16:48:40 UTC 2020 mips64 GNU/Linux" kernel.

(on the Octeon platform → all EdgeRouters, except the "X" models, but versions are quite equal/similar/close)

I have not built my own distribution (incl. a kernel with the HW-offloading supplements, etc.), because I actually liked EdgeOS - with the exception of the Quagga-Version (the non-FRR variant from Japan, if I recall right) that comes with it. 

However, if you do not configure anything in the "protocol" section of the EdgeOS/Vyatta configuration and create a bird.conf file and fire up BIRD instead everything (almost) works just fine. Yes, you can't see the routing config in the GUI, but I disable it anyway because I don't use it and want the memory for important things. Of course, "show bgp neighbors" would also be replaced by "birdc show protocols", etc. but this is just fine!


I built my BIRDs directly on the routers themselves (just install "build-essential" and very few other packages), but since you talked about "distributions" here, be warned: A "firmware upgrade" wipes/reinstalls everything in the filesystem, except /config and below. Since you don't want to do a FW upgrade and have the box reboot without it's routing engine/daemon I compiled BIRD to live under /config/opt/bird1 or /config/opt/bird2 (or just /config/opt/bird ;-).

Put a proper startup-script for it into /config/scripts/post-config.d and the BIRD shall be woken by EdgeOS, once all interfaces are plumbed and addressed and everything works very well - even after a firmware upgrade. BIRD binaries built for EdgeOS 1 even survive a FW upgrade to EdgeOS 2 this way, btw.
(though you want BIRD 2 built on EdgeOS 2 to get the latest & gratest features → RPKI, for example)

Just my 2¢ ...

	Clemens

PS: We use this combination (among others) in parts of the IETF Meeting network for many years now. So if you have attended an IETF meeting (in person) since spring of 2014 (#89 → London) you are very likely to have been routed by it 😉  (yes, including all recent meetings in Praha!)



> On 10. Apr 2021, at 14:23, Skyler Mäntysaari <sm at samip.fi> wrote:
> 
> I'm not sure, how would I check if it's LE or BE?
> 
> CPU info on ER-12:
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> system type             : UBNT_E300
> machine                 : Unknown
> processor               : 0
> cpu model               : Cavium Octeon III V0.2  FPU V0.0
> BogoMIPS                : 2000.00
> wait instruction        : yes
> microsecond timers      : yes
> tlb_entries             : 256
> extra interrupt vector  : yes
> hardware watchpoint     : yes, count: 2, address/irw mask: [0x0ffc, 0x0ffb]
> isa                     : mips1 mips2 mips3 mips4 mips5 mips64r2
> ASEs implemented        : vz
> shadow register sets    : 1
> kscratch registers      : 4
> package                 : 0
> core                    : 0
> VCED exceptions         : not available
> VCEI exceptions         : not available
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> P.S Did you also use the UBNT kernel modules for hardware acceleration?
> 
> On 10/04/2021 15.19, Ondrej Zajicek wrote:
>> On Sat, Apr 10, 2021 at 02:46:25PM +0300, Skyler Mäntysaari wrote:
>>> Please also keep in mind that they do not run normal Debian, but EdgeOS
>>> which is a fork of vyatta which uses Debian.
>> Several years ago, i run original Edgerouter (ERLite-3) with vanilla
>> Debian, just with kernel from EdgeOS.
>> 
>>> EdgeRouter-4 and EdgeRouter-12 run on mips64.
>> It is BE or LE? ERLite-3 was (AFAIK) mips (BE), Debian offers mips,
>> mipsel (LE) and mips64el (LE), but no mips64. It is possible (but
>> unlikely) that they build EdgeOS for a differench arch.
>> 

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