Command Line Interface
The VyOS CLI comprises an operational and a configuration mode.
Operational Mode
Operational mode allows for commands to perform operational system tasks and view system and service status, while configuration mode allows for the modification of system configuration.
The CLI provides a built-in help system. In the CLI the ? key may be used to
display available commands. The TAB key can be used to auto-complete commands
and will present the help system upon a conflict or unknown value.
Typing a literal question mark
Because ? is the help key, a literal question mark needs special handling
when it is part of a value, such as a URL with a query string. Press
Ctrl-V followed by ? to insert a literal question mark; this works on
all VyOS releases.
On current rolling releases a ? typed inside a quoted string is
inserted literally, and only triggers the help system outside of quotes:
set firewall group remote-group EXAMPLE url 'https://example.com/list?key=abc'
On LTS and older releases the ? key always triggers help, even inside
quotes — use Ctrl-V ? there.
Quoting values
Always quote a value that contains spaces or shell special characters such
as &, ;, # or quotes. The configuration shell is based on bash: an
unquoted & does not cause an error — it is interpreted as a command
separator and the value is silently truncated at the &:
set firewall group remote-group EXAMPLE url 'https://example.com/list?key=abc&ipVersion=4'
For example typing sh followed by the TAB key will complete to show.
Pressing TAB a second time will display the possible sub-commands of the
show command.
vyos@vyos:~$ s[tab]
set show
Example showing possible show commands:
vyos@vyos:~$ show [tab]
Possible completions:
arp Show Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) information
bridge Show bridging information
cluster Show clustering information
configuration Show running configuration
conntrack Show conntrack entries in the conntrack table
conntrack-sync
Show connection syncing information
date Show system date and time
dhcp Show Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) information
dhcpv6 Show status related to DHCPv6
disk Show status of disk device
dns Show Domain Name Server (DNS) information
file Show files for a particular image
firewall Show firewall information
flow-accounting
Show flow accounting statistics
hardware Show system hardware details
history show command history
host Show host information
incoming Show ethernet input-policy information
: q
You can scroll up with the keys [Shift]+[PageUp] and scroll down with
[Shift]+[PageDown].
When the output of a command results in more lines than can be displayed on the
terminal screen the output is paginated as indicated by a : prompt.
- When viewing in page mode the following commands are available:
qkey can be used to cancel outputspacewill scroll down one pagebwill scroll back one pagereturnwill scroll down one lineup-arrowanddown-arrowwill scroll up or down one line at a time respectivelyleft-arrowandright-arrowcan be used to scroll left or right in the event that the output has lines which exceed the terminal size.
Operational mode command families
Many operational mode commands in VyOS are placed in families such as show,
clear, or reset. Every such family has a specific meaning to allow the user
to guess how the command is going to behave — in particular, whether it will
be disruptive to the system or not.
Note that this convention was not always followed with perfect consistency and some commands may still be in wrong families, so you should always check the command help and documentation if you are not sure what exactly it does.
clear
“Clear” commands are completely non-disruptive to any system operations. Generally, they can be used freely without hesitation.
Most often their purpose is to remove or reset various debug and diagnostic information such as system logs and packet counters.
Examples:
clear console— clears the screen.clear interfaces ethernet eth0 counters— zeroes packet counters oneth0.clear log— deletes all system log entries.
reset
“Reset” commands can be locally-disruptive. They may, for example, terminate a single user session or a session with a dynamic routing protocol peer.
They should be used with caution since they may have a significant impact on a particular users in the network.
reset pppoe-server username jsmith— terminate all PPPoE sessions from userjsmith.reset bgp 192.0.2.54— terminates the BGP session with neighbor 192.0.2.54.reset vpn ipsec site-to-site peer vpn.example.com— terminates IPsec tunnels tovpn.example.com.reset session tty1— terminates the TTY user sessiontty1
restart
“Restart” operations may disrupt an entire subsystem. Most often they initiate a restart of a server process, which causes it to be unavailable for a brief period and resets all the process state.
They should be used with extreme caution.
restart dhcp server— restarts the IPv4 DHCP server process (DHCP requests are not served while it is restarting).restart ipsec— restarts the IPsec process (which forces all sessions and all IPsec process state to reset).
force
“Force” commands force the system to perform an action that it might perform by itself at a later point.
Examples:
force arp request interface eth1 address 10.3.0.2— send a gratuitous ARP request.force root-partition-auto-resize— grow the root filesystem to the size of the system partition (this is also done on startup, but this command can do it without a reboot).
execute
“Execute” commands are for executing various diagnostic and auxiliary actions that the system would never perform by itself.
Examples:
execute wake-on-lan interface <intf> host <MAC>— send a Wake-On-LAN packet to a host.
show
“Show” commands display various system information. They may occasionally use a pager for long outputs, that you can quit by pressing the Q button. Their output is always finite, however.
Examples:
show system login— displays current system users.show ip route— displays the IPv4 routing table.
monitor
“Monitor” commands initiate various monitoring operations that may output
information continuously, until terminated with Ctrl-C or disabled.
Examples:
monitor log— continuously outputs latest system logs.
Configuration Mode
To enter configuration mode use the configure command:
vyos@vyos:~$ configure
[edit]
vyos@vyos:~#
Note
Prompt changes from $ to #. To exit configuration mode, type exit.
vyos@vyos:~# exit
exit
vyos@vyos:~$
See the configuration section of this document for more information on configuration mode.
Configuration Overview
VyOS makes use of a unified configuration file for the entire system’s
configuration: /config/config.boot. This allows easy template creation,
backup, and replication of system configuration. A system can thus also be
easily cloned by simply copying the required configuration files.
Terminology
A VyOS system has three major types of configurations:
Active or running configuration is the system configuration that is loaded and currently active (used by VyOS). Any change in the configuration will have to be committed to belong to the active/running configuration.
Working configuration is the one that is currently being modified in configuration mode. Changes made to the working configuration do not go into effect until the changes are committed with the
commitcommand. At which time the working configuration will become the active or running configuration.Saved configuration is the one saved to a file using the
savecommand. It allows you to keep safe a configuration for future uses. There can be multiple configuration files. The default or “boot” configuration is saved and loaded from the file/config/config.boot.
Editing the configuration
The configuration can be edited by the use of set and delete
commands from within configuration mode.
Configuration commands are flattened from the tree into ‘one-liner’ commands
shown in show configuration commands from operation mode. Commands are
relative to the level where they are executed and all redundant information from
the current level is removed from the command entered.
[edit]
vyos@vyos# set interfaces ethernet eth0 address 192.0.2.100/24
[edit interfaces ethernet eth0]
vyos@vyos# set address 203.0.113.6/24
These two commands above are essentially the same, just executed from different levels in the hierarchy.
To delete a configuration entry use the delete command, this also deletes all sub-levels under the current level you’ve specified in the delete command. Deleting an entry will also result in the element reverting back to its default value if one exists.
[edit interfaces ethernet eth0]
vyos@vyos# delete address 192.0.2.100/24
Any change you do on the configuration, will not take effect until committed using the commit command in configuration mode.
vyos@vyos# commit
[edit]
vyos@vyos# exit
Warning: configuration changes have not been saved.
vyos@vyos:~$
Hint
You can specify a commit message with commit comment <message>.
Use this command to preserve configuration changes upon reboot. By default it is stored at /config/config.boot. In the case you want to store the configuration file somewhere else, you can add a local path, a SCP address, a FTP address or a TFTP address.
vyos@vyos# save
Saving configuration to '/config/config.boot'...
Done
vyos@vyos# save [tab]
Possible completions:
<Enter> Save to system config file
<file> Save to file on local machine
scp://<user>:<passwd>@<host>:/<file> Save to file on remote machine
ftp://<user>:<passwd>@<host>/<file> Save to file on remote machine
tftp://<host>/<file> Save to file on remote machine
vyos@vyos# save tftp://192.168.0.100/vyos-test.config.boot
Saving configuration to 'tftp://192.168.0.100/vyos-test.config.boot'...
Done
Configuration mode can not be exited while uncommitted changes exist. To exit configuration mode without applying changes, the exit discard command must be used.
All changes in the working config will thus be lost.
vyos@vyos# exit
Cannot exit: configuration modified.
Use 'exit discard' to discard the changes and exit.
[edit]
vyos@vyos# exit discard
Use this command to temporarily commit your changes and set the number of minutes available for confirmation. confirm must be entered within those minutes, otherwise the system will revert into a previous configuration. The default value is 10 minutes.
The definition of ‘revert’ and ‘a previous configuration’ depends on the setting:
vyos@vyos# set system config-management commit-confirm action
Possible completions:
reload Reload previous configuration if not confirmed
reboot Reboot to saved configuration if not confirmed (default)
Note that ‘reload’ loads the most recent completed configuration and does not require a reboot.
What if you are doing something dangerous? Suppose you want to setup a firewall, and you are not sure there are no mistakes that will lock you out of your system. You can use confirmed commit. If you issue the commit-confirm command, your changes will be committed, and if you don’t issue the confirm command in 10 minutes, your system will reboot into previous config revision.
vyos@router# set firewall interface eth0 local name FromWorld
vyos@router# commit-confirm
commit confirm will be automatically reboot in 10 minutes unless confirmed
Proceed? [confirm]y
[edit]
vyos@router# confirm
[edit]
Copy a configuration element.
You can copy and remove configuration subtrees. Suppose you set up a firewall ruleset FromWorld with one rule that allows traffic from specific subnet. Now you want to setup a similar rule, but for different subnet. Change your edit level to firewall name FromWorld and use copy rule 10 to rule 20, then modify rule 20.
vyos@router# show firewall name FromWorld
default-action drop
rule 10 {
action accept
source {
address 203.0.113.0/24
}
}
[edit]
vyos@router# edit firewall name FromWorld
[edit firewall name FromWorld]
vyos@router# copy rule 10 to rule 20
[edit firewall name FromWorld]
vyos@router# set rule 20 source address 198.51.100.0/24
[edit firewall name FromWorld]
vyos@router# commit
[edit firewall name FromWorld]
Rename a configuration element.
You can also rename config subtrees:
vyos@router# rename rule 10 to rule 5
[edit firewall name FromWorld]
vyos@router# commit
[edit firewall name FromWorld]
Note that show command respects your edit level and from this level you can view the modified firewall ruleset with just show with no parameters.
vyos@router# show
default-action drop
rule 5 {
action accept
source {
address 203.0.113.0/24
}
}
rule 20 {
action accept
source {
address 198.51.100.0/24
}
}
Add comment as an annotation to a configuration node.
The comment command allows you to insert a comment above the <config node> configuration section. When shown, comments are enclosed with /* and */ as open/close delimiters. Comments need to be committed, just like other config changes.
To remove an existing comment from your current configuration, specify an empty string enclosed in double quote marks ("") as the comment text.
Example:
vyos@vyos# comment firewall all-ping "Yes I know this VyOS is cool"
vyos@vyos# commit
vyos@vyos# show
firewall {
/* Yes I know this VyOS is cool */
all-ping enable
broadcast-ping disable
...
}
Note
An important thing to note is that since the comment is added on top of the section, it will not appear if the show <section> command is used. With the above example, the show firewall command would return starting after the firewall { line, hiding the comment.
Access opmode from config mode
When inside configuration mode you are not directly able to execute operational commands.
Access to these commands are possible through the use of the run [command] command. From this command you will have access to everything accessible from operational mode.
Command completion and syntax help with ? and [tab] will also work.
[edit]
vyos@vyos# run show interfaces
Codes: S - State, L - Link, u - Up, D - Down, A - Admin Down
Interface IP Address S/L Description
--------- ---------- --- -----------
eth0 0.0.0.0/0 u/u
Managing configurations
VyOS comes with an integrated versioning system for the system configuration. It automatically maintains a backup of every previous configuration which has been committed to the system. The configurations are versioned locally for rollback but they can also be stored on a remote host for archiving/backup reasons.
Local Archive
Revisions are stored on disk. You can view, compare and rollback them to any previous revisions if something goes wrong.
View all existing revisions on the local system.
vyos@vyos:~$ show system commit
0 2015-03-30 08:53:03 by vyos via cli
1 2015-03-30 08:52:20 by vyos via cli
2 2015-03-26 21:26:01 by root via boot-config-loader
3 2015-03-26 20:43:18 by root via boot-config-loader
4 2015-03-25 11:06:14 by root via boot-config-loader
5 2015-03-25 01:04:28 by root via boot-config-loader
6 2015-03-25 00:16:47 by vyos via cli
7 2015-03-24 23:43:45 by root via boot-config-loader
You can specify the number of revisions stored on disk. N can be in the range of 0 - 65535. When the number of revisions exceeds the configured value, the oldest revision is removed. The default setting for this value is to store 100 revisions locally.
Compare configurations
VyOS lets you compare different configurations.
Use this command to spot what the differences are between different configurations.
vyos@vyos# compare [tab]
Possible completions:
<Enter> Compare working & active configurations
saved Compare working & saved configurations
<N> Compare working with revision N
<N> <M> Compare revision N with M
Revisions:
0 2013-12-17 20:01:37 root by boot-config-loader
1 2013-12-13 15:59:31 root by boot-config-loader
2 2013-12-12 21:56:22 vyos by cli
3 2013-12-12 21:55:11 vyos by cli
4 2013-12-12 21:27:54 vyos by cli
5 2013-12-12 21:23:29 vyos by cli
6 2013-12-12 21:13:59 root by boot-config-loader
7 2013-12-12 16:25:19 vyos by cli
8 2013-12-12 15:44:36 vyos by cli
9 2013-12-12 15:42:07 root by boot-config-loader
10 2013-12-12 15:42:06 root by init
The command compare allows you to compare different type of configurations. It also lets you compare different revisions through the compare N M command, where N and M are revision numbers. The output will describe how the configuration N is when compared to M indicating with a plus sign (+) the additional parts N has when compared to M, and indicating with a minus sign (-) the lacking parts N misses when compared to M.
vyos@vyos# compare 0 6
[edit interfaces]
+dummy dum1 {
+ address 10.189.0.1/31
+}
[edit interfaces ethernet eth0]
+vif 99 {
+ address 10.199.0.1/31
+}
-vif 900 {
- address 192.0.2.4/24
-}
The command above also lets you see the difference between two commits. By default the difference with the running config is shown.
vyos@router# run show system commit diff 4
[edit system]
+ipv6 {
+ disable-forwarding
+}
This means four commits ago we did set system ipv6 disable-forwarding.
Rollback Changes
You can rollback configuration changes using the rollback command. This will apply the selected revision and trigger a system reboot.
Remote Archive
VyOS can upload the configuration to one or more remote locations after each
commit. On every commit the config.boot file is copied to each
configured destination, named
config.boot-<hostname>.<YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS> (a git destination keeps the
history in the repository itself instead).
A destination is a named location carrying exactly one transport protocol:
scp, sftp, ssh, ftp, ftps, http, https, tftp or git.
Remote server to upload to - an IPv4 address, an IPv6 address or a hostname.
Required for every protocol except a local git repository.
Remote port. Defaults to the protocol’s standard port when omitted.
Remote path the configuration is stored under, or - for git - the path to
the repository. Defaults to the server root when omitted.
User name for protocols that authenticate. Not used by tftp or a local
git repository.
Password or token for the user above. For ftp/ftps a password may be set
without a user name - the connection then uses the anonymous user. For every
other protocol a password requires a user name.
Transport used to reach a git repository:
https- push over HTTPS (the default when unset).http- push over plain HTTP.ssh- push over SSH, authenticated by the router user’s SSH key; theusernameis the SSH user (giton most hosted services).file- a local repository on the router itself; onlypathapplies, there is no server, port or authentication.
Source address used for the outbound connection to each location. A git
destination ignores this option.
Specify name of the VRF instance used to upload the configuration to the remote system.
Note
The number of commit revisions does not affect the commit-archive.
The SSH-based transports (scp, sftp, ssh, and git over ssh) require
the remote host key to be trusted first, or the connection fails. Add it to the
router user’s ~/.ssh/known_hosts once - use -p <port> for a non-default SSH
port, and verify the key fingerprint against a trusted source before relying
on it:
ssh-keyscan <server> >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
Example - an SCP destination and a git destination over SSH:
set system config-management commit-archive location backup1 scp server '192.0.2.1'
set system config-management commit-archive location backup1 scp authentication username 'bob'
set system config-management commit-archive location backup1 scp authentication password 's3cr3t'
set system config-management commit-archive location backup1 scp path '/backups'
set system config-management commit-archive location github git transport 'ssh'
set system config-management commit-archive location github git server 'github.com'
set system config-management commit-archive location github git path '/example/configs.git'
set system config-management commit-archive location github git authentication username 'git'
Saving and loading manually
You can use the save and load commands if you want to manually manage
specific configuration files.
When using the save command, you can add a specific location where to
store your configuration file. And, when needed it, you will be able to load it
with the load command:
Use this command to load a configuration which will replace the running configuration. Define the location of the configuration file to be loaded. You can use a path to a local file, an SCP address, an SFTP address, an FTP address, an HTTP address, an HTTPS address or a TFTP address.
vyos@vyos# load
Possible completions:
<Enter> Load from system config file
<file> Load from file on local machine
scp://<user>:<passwd>@<host>:/<file> Load from file on remote machine
sftp://<user>:<passwd>@<host>/<file> Load from file on remote machine
ftp://<user>:<passwd>@<host>/<file> Load from file on remote machine
http://<host>/<file> Load from file on remote machine
https://<host>/<file> Load from file on remote machine
tftp://<host>/<file> Load from file on remote machine
If you are remotely connected, you will lose your connection. You may want to copy first the config, edit it to ensure connectivity, and load the edited config.
Restore Default
In the case you want to completely delete your configuration and restore the default one, you can enter the following command in configuration mode:
load /opt/vyatta/etc/config.boot.default
You will be asked if you want to continue. If you accept, you will have to use
commit if you want to make the changes active.
Then you may want to save in order to delete the saved configuration
too.
Note
Prompt changes from $ to #. To exit configuration mode, type exit.