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Automation 7. Running and Parsing MD-CLI Commands with pySROS Directly on Nokia Router or Remotely.

Anton Karneliuk

Hello my friend,

We are continuing studying the Python library pySROS, which Nokia recently published. With all our passion for the Model-Driven Automation, we know that still a lot of people use the CLI daily. As such, today we’ll take a look on how we can automate execution and processing of the output of CLI commands in Nokia SR OS devices.



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No part of this blogpost could be reproduced, stored in a 

retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any 

means, electronic, mechanical or photocopying, recording, 

or otherwise, for commercial purposes without the 

prior permission of the author.

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Brief Description

Why do we need to run MD-CLI commands? Why shall we use pySROS for that at all? There are other, well established tools for SSH/CLI network automation, such as paramiko with a wrapper netmiko, scrapli, and some others. Those are the questions, you may have in your head right now. All of them are absolutely valid. Let’s try to answer them.

The main purpose of any automation is to improve operational efficiency via:

As such, whether the automation is Model-Driven or Text-Driven (i.e., CLI-based), it doesn’t really matter as long as the requested use case is solved. In a longer run, for sure, Model-Driven Automation is a single correct approach. However, as network engineers use CLI daily to conduct operational activities, it is okay to start automation journey with an automation of this CLI.

The question of a library to use is often a personal choice. Some people prefer to use netmiko due to its wide range of supported vendors. Others prefer to use paramiko natively to control the messaging avoiding netmiko wrapping. One of the biggest advantage of mentioned libraries is that they are generally vendor agnostic, and, therefore, allow you to automate not only Nokia SR OS based network devices.

At the same time, none of them can be executed directly on the network device (unless you pure Linux based operating system such Nokia SR Linux or Cumulus Linux and to a degree Arista EOS and Cisco Nexus, where you can install Python external libraries). For traditional network operating system, which you can find in Service Provider networks, such Nokia SR OS, Cisco IOS XR, and others, you can use only what is available on the device by default, as you cannot install other components. This is where pySROS for Nokia SR OS comes to a stage.

The pySROS library is installed on Nokia SR OS network device, and if your intention is to create a script to manage such a device and have a possibility to execute script both remotely (from your Laptop) and locally on the network device, pySROS is a viable option for you.

On top of that, the execution of the commands itself, especially operational commands) often doesn’t lead to some result unless a network engineer visually analyse and interpret the information. Therefore, some post processing of the information is needed in order to get some useful result.

Let’s take a look how all these things could be implemented together.

Lab Setup

We continue using the lab setup we built in our first blog in this series:

Our lab consists just out of two components:

In previous blogposts (part 1, part 2, and part 3) you can learn more the setup and how to build that.

Scenario Description

Following the conversation started in the Brief Description part, we focus today on a few topics:

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Besides that, we’ll review a few useful scenarios, how to deal with exceptions, which may arise when you use pysros.

Python Script Development

As said above, the feature of the CLI execution via pysros was introduced in the latest to the date Nokia SR OS version 21.10.R1. The versioning of pysros library follows the versioning of SR OS; therefore, we need to make sure we have the corresponding version, before we start creating a Python script.

Step #0. Upgrade pySROS for Remote Execution

It is worth to mention that upgrade is needed only for remote host (i.e., when you run Python script from your laptop). The pySROS is already upgraded towards the corresponding version in new Nokia SR OS 21.10.R1 and there is no upgrade needed.

The upgrade of pysros is following the same pattern as any Python library:



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(venv) root@host:~/nokia# pip install --upgrade pysros

!

! OUTPUT IS TRUNCATED FOR BREVITY

!

Uninstalling pysros-21.7.2:

  Successfully uninstalled pysros-21.7.2

Successfully installed pysros-21.10.2

Once this step is done, you can proceed with the development of the script itself.

Step #1. Create a Python Script for Remote Execution and Parsing of MD-CLI Commands

In the version of pysros, Nokia has introduced a new method cli(), which take a single argument, that is a CLI command you are willing to execute on the device. As pySROS generally requires the network device to operate in the model-driven mode, it, therefore, executes MD-CLI commands.

It is interesting that in the documentation to pySROS Nokia specifically mentions that it is possible to provide output redirections (e.g., “no-more”) as well.

Let’s take as a basis one of the previous scripts and amend it to use this new method:



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#!/usr/bin/env python



# Modules

import datetime

import os

from dotenv import load_dotenv

from pysros.management import connect

import re





# Body

if __name__ == "__main__":

    ## Get connectivity details

    load_dotenv()

    host={

            "ip_address": os.getenv("NOKIA_IP"),

            "username": os.getenv("NOKIA_USER"),

            "password": os.getenv("NOKIA_PASS")

         }



    ## Timestamp: started

    t1 = datetime.datetime.now()



    ## Interecting with the device

    connect_obj = connect(host=host["ip_address"], username=host["username"],

                          password=host["password"])



    results = connect_obj.cli("show router route-table | no-more")

    connect_obj.disconnect()



    ## Timestamp: completed

    t2 = datetime.datetime.now()



    ## Printing results

    tl = os.get_terminal_size()

    print(f"{'=' * tl.columns}\nCompleted in {t2 -t1}\n{'=' * tl.columns}\n")



    ## Printing collected data

    print(results)



    print(f"\n{'=' * tl.columns}\n")

Refer to the original blog for the step-by-step explanation.

Compared to the original script, we have replaced the NETCONF get-config operation connect_obj.running.get() with an MD-CLI connect_obj.cli(), the rest of the script stays untouched. As you see, in the argument we specify command “show router route-table | no-more” (as we don’t know, how long the output could be, we add the no-more output redirect).

Let’s execute the script and see the results:



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# python pysros_mdcli_get_routes.py 

==========================================================================================================

Completed in 0:00:05.048169

==========================================================================================================





===============================================================================

Route Table (Router: Base)

===============================================================================

Dest Prefix[Flags]                            Type    Proto     Age        Pref

      Next Hop[Interface Name]                                    Metric   

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

0.0.0.0/0                                     Remote  Static    01h11m36s  5

       10.0.0.1                                                     1

10.0.0.0/31                                   Local   Local     14h14m16s  0

       oc_1/1/c2/1_0                                                0

10.0.0.2/31                                   Local   Local     14h14m16s  0

       oc_1/1/c1/1_0                                                0

10.0.255.11/32                                Local   Local     14h14m16s  0

       system                                                       0

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

No. of Routes: 4

Flags: n = Number of times nexthop is repeated

       B = BGP backup route available

       L = LFA nexthop available

       S = Sticky ECMP requested

===============================================================================



==========================================================================================================

Pay attention to the completion time. It is over 5 seconds, which is very long. You will see it though much different, when you execute the script directly on the network device.

So, we have duped the routing table… So what? You can think that you can run the corresponding command in CLI SSH and get the result. You are not wrong; however, let us give you a bit broader context.

Whenever you are collecting output of certain CLI commands, you are typically looking or something specific (e.g., presence of a specific route in a routing table, etc) with a purpose of answering the question: is the state of network device inline with expectations or not. As such, we can split the task in two actions:

  1. Collect a raw data from a network device.
  2. Process the collected data.

What does “process the collected data” mean? In a simplest form it means that you shall find the key data and extract it (parsing) and then make a statement based on that data (analysis). In a standard Python distribution we have a library named re, which stands for regular expression. This is the easiest, yet very powerful, tool to find a subtract the data, you may be interested in.

Let’s say, we don’t want to see the output of the routing table, but rather we are willing to know if:

Let’s do the corresponding amendments to our script:



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! OUTPUT IS TRUNCATD FOR BREVITY

#!/usr/bin/env python



# Modules

import datetime

import os

from dotenv import load_dotenv

from pysros.management import connect

import re





# Body

if __name__ == "__main__":

    ## Get connectivity details

    load_dotenv()

    host={

            "ip_address": os.getenv("NOKIA_IP"),

            "username": os.getenv("NOKIA_USER"),

            "password": os.getenv("NOKIA_PASS")

         }



    ## Timestamp: started

    t1 = datetime.datetime.now()



    ## Interecting with the device

    connect_obj = connect(host=host["ip_address"], username=host["username"],

                          password=host["password"])



    results = connect_obj.cli("show router route-table | no-more")

    connect_obj.disconnect()



    ## Timestamp: completed

    t2 = datetime.datetime.now()



    ## Printing results

    tl = os.get_terminal_size()

    print(f"{'=' * tl.columns}\nCompleted in {t2 -t1}\n{'=' * tl.columns}\n")



    ## Processing Data

    is_default_route_bool = True if re.search(r'\b0\.0\.0\.0/0\b', results) else False



    num_routes_int = 0

    for line_str in results.splitlines():

        if re.match(r'^No\. of Routes:', line_str):

            num_routes_int = int(re.sub(r'^No\. of Routes: (\d)$', r'\1', line_str))



    print(f"Routes in routing table: {num_routes_int}\nDoes default route exist: {is_default_route_bool}")



    print(f"\n{'=' * tl.columns}\n")

What have we done so far?

  1. Added a new module re.
  2. Removed print(results) function.
  3. Created a new variable is_default_route_bool of a Boolean type, which obtains True value, if the the default route is found using the search() function from the re module. Otherwise, it is False.
  4. Using splitlines() function the multiline string with the collected output of MD-CLI command is converted into a list of strings, which then validated for a corresponding pattern by the match() function from the re module. If there is a match, then the sub() function from the same module extracts the value with the number of the routes.
  5. Finally, we print() the analysed information to given answers to mentioned questions.

A bit jumping the gun, in an “ordinary” Python the 4th step could be replaced by findall() function. However, it is not implemented in MicroPython. Therefore, we have to take a longer road to achieve portability.

Let’s see how this script would work:



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# python pysros_mdcli_get_routes.py 

==========================================================================================================

Completed in 0:00:05.270960

==========================================================================================================



Routes in routing table: 4

Does default route exist: True



==========================================================================================================

As you see, the data is successfully parsed, extracted and put in the context. Now you may start thinking, which perspectives are opening in front of you: you can collect some data, parse and extract the key values, which use an input for the next request, etc. It is powerful, isn’t it?

Step #2. Create a Python Script for Execution and Parsing of MD-CLI Commands Locally in Nokia SR OS

It is even more powerful, as you can run it directly on the Nokia SR OS router. However, there is a slight modification needed for the regular expressions.

As discussed in the previous blogpost, Nokia SR OS has a MicroPython distribution, which generally has truncated functionality to be able to run directly on various controllers. The goos news is that the re library is part of MicroPython. The bad news is that besides absence of a number of functions, not all expressions are available either. For example, the expression “\b“, which specifies the beginning or end of the word is not implemented. Therefore, we need to amend the template.

Per the Release Notes for Nokia SR OS 21.10.R1, datetime library is not implemented either. However, we already the last time used the time module, so it is an easy replacement for us.

So, the script to run on Nokia SR OS device would look like as follows:



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[/]

A:admin@sr1# file 



[/file "cf3:"]

A:admin@sr1# show python_scripts/pysros_mdcli_get_routes_sros.py

File: pysros_mdcli_get_routes_sros.py

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Modules

import time

from pysros.management import connect

import re





# Body

if __name__ == "__main__":

    ## Get the timesamp in the beginning of the command

    t1 = time.ticks_ms()



    ## Collect the information

    connect_obj = connect()             

    results = connect_obj.cli("show router route-table | no-more")

    connect_obj.disconnect()



    ## Processing results

    is_default_route_bool = True if re.search(r'0\.0\.0\.0/0', results) else False



    num_routes_int = 0

    for line_str in results.splitlines():

        if re.match(r'^No\. of Routes:', line_str):

            num_routes_int = int(re.sub(r'^No\. of Routes: (\d)$', r'\1', line_str))



    print("Routes in routing table: {}\nDoes default route exist: {}".format(num_routes_int, is_default_route_bool))



    ## Get the timesamp at the end

    t2 = time.ticks_ms()



    ## Print time

    print("\nCompleted in {} ms".format(time.ticks_diff(t2, t1)))  





===============================================================================

Read the previous blogpost to get more details about the reasons of the syntax change.

The major changes are:

Let’s test the created script directly from Nokia SR OS based device:



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A:admin@sr1# pyexec "python_scripts/pysros_mdcli_get_routes_sros.py"

Routes in routing table: 4

Does default route exist: True



Completed in 3 ms

As you see, now the duration of the script is just 3 milliseconds compared to the 5 seconds, when you run the script remotely.

The output of the script is the same as the one above, which proves that the choice of libraries and overall logic was right for portability.

Examples in GitHub

You can find this and other examples in our GitHub repository.

Lessons Learned

Working on this blogpost forced us thinking, that portability of Python applications between different platforms is not something, we should take for granted. In vast majority of the cases we create applications for Linux or MAC, where we can install any extra library at our choice, ignoring the libraries available by default. Using MicroPython is a good refresher to see what does Python has built-in by default and make use of it. Creativity always comes via constraints.

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Conclusion

In this blogpost we have covered the development of the Multiplatform Python script, which even can be executed by various Python interpreters. In a less abstract terms, in pySROS 21.10.R1 the new feature was introduced, which allows you to run arbitrary CLI commands from Python script. This functionality is a good building block for your custom workflows with Python, which may help during troubleshooting, analysis and investigations. Take care and good bye.

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P.S.

If you have further questions or you need help with your networks, we are happy to assist you, just send us a message. Also don’t forget to share the article on your social media, if you like it.

BR,

Anton Karneliuk

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