The VyOS CLI (Command-Line Interface)
comprises an operational and a configuration 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.
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:
q
key can be used to cancel outputspace
will scroll down one pageb
will scroll back one pagereturn
will scroll down one lineup-arrow
anddown-arrow
will scroll up or down one line at a time respectivelyleft-arrow
andright-arrow
can be used to scroll left or right in the event that the output has lines which exceed the terminal size.
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.
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.
live 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
commit
command. At which time the working configuration will become the active or running configuration. - Saved configuration is the one saved to a file using the
save
command. 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
.
show configuration
View the current active configuration, also known as the running configuration, from the operational mode.
vyos@vyos:~$ show configuration
interfaces {
ethernet eth0 {
address dhcp
hw-id 00:53:00:00:aa:01
}
loopback lo {
}
}
service {
ssh {
port 22
}
}
system {
config-management {
commit-revisions 20
}
console {
device ttyS0 {
speed 9600
}
}
login {
user vyos {
authentication {
encrypted-password ****************
}
level admin
}
}
ntp {
server 0.pool.ntp.org {
}
server 1.pool.ntp.org {
}
server 2.pool.ntp.org {
}
}
syslog {
global {
facility all {
level notice
}
facility protocols {
level debug
}
}
}
}
By default, the configuration is displayed in a hierarchy like the above example, this is only one of the possible ways to display the configuration. When the configuration is generated and the device is configured, changes are added through a collection of set
and delete
commands.
show configuration commands
Get a collection of all the set commands required which led to the running configuration.
vyos@vyos:~$ show configuration commands
set interfaces ethernet eth0 address 'dhcp'
set interfaces ethernet eth0 hw-id '00:53:dd:44:3b:0f'
set interfaces loopback 'lo'
set service ssh port '22'
set system config-management commit-revisions '20'
set system console device ttyS0 speed '9600'
set system login user vyos authentication encrypted-password '$6$Vt68...QzF0'
set system login user vyos level 'admin'
set system ntp server '0.pool.ntp.org'
set system ntp server '1.pool.ntp.org'
set system ntp server '2.pool.ntp.org'
set system syslog global facility all level 'notice'
set system syslog global facility protocols level 'debug'
Both these show
commands should be executed when in operational mode, they do not work directly in configuration mode. There is a special way on how to run_opmode_from_config_mode
.
Hint
Use the show configuration commands | strip-private
command when you want to hide private data. You may want to do so if you want to share your configuration on the forum.
When entering the configuration mode you are navigating inside a tree structure, to enter configuration mode enter the command configure
when in operational mode.
vyos@vyos$ configure
[edit]
vyos@vyos#
Note
When going into configuration mode, prompt changes from $
to #
.
All commands executed here are relative to the configuration level you have entered. You can do everything from the top level, but commands will be quite lengthy when manually typing them.
The current hierarchy level can be changed by the edit
command.
[edit]
vyos@vyos# edit interfaces ethernet eth0
[edit interfaces ethernet eth0]
vyos@vyos#
You are now in a sublevel relative to interfaces ethernet eth0
, all commands executed from this point on are relative to this sublevel. Use eithe the top
or exit
command to go back to the top of the hierarchy. You can also use the up
command to move only one level up at a time.
show
The show
command within configuration mode will show the working configuration indicating line changes with +
for additions, >
for replacements and -
for deletions.
Example:
vyos@vyos:~$ configure
[edit]
vyos@vyos# show interfaces
ethernet eth0 {
description MY_OLD_DESCRIPTION
disable
hw-id 00:53:dd:44:3b:03
}
loopback lo {
}
[edit]
vyos@vyos# set interfaces ethernet eth0 address dhcp
[edit]
vyos@vyos# set interfaces ethernet eth0 description MY_NEW_DESCRIPTION
[edit]
vyos@vyos# delete interfaces ethernet eth0 disable
[edit]
vyos@vyos# show interfaces
ethernet eth0 {
+ address dhcp
> description MY_NEW_DESCRIPTION
- disable
hw-id 00:53:dd:44:3b:03
}
loopback lo {
}
It is also possible to display all set commands within configuration mode using show | commands
vyos@vyos# show interfaces ethernet eth0 | commands
set address dhcp
set hw-id 00:53:ad:44:3b:03
These commands are also relative to the level you are inside and only relevant configuration blocks will be displayed when entering a sub-level.
[edit interfaces ethernet eth0]
vyos@vyos# show
address dhcp
hw-id 00:53:ad:44:3b:03
Exiting from the configuration mode is done via the exit
command from the top level, executing exit
from within a sub-level takes you back to the top level.
[edit interfaces ethernet eth0]
vyos@vyos# exit
[edit]
vyos@vyos# exit
Warning: configuration changes have not been saved.
The configuration can be edited by the use of set
and delete
commands from within configuration mode.
set
Use this command to set the value of a parameter or to create a new element.
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 interface 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.
delete
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
commit
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:~$
save
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, an SCP address, an 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'...
######################################################################## 100.0%
Done
exit [discard]
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
commit-confirm <minutes>
Use this command to temporarily commit your changes and set the number of minutes available for validation. confirm
must be entered within those minutes, otherwise the system will reboot into the previous configuration. The default value is 10 minutes.
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 commited, and if you don't issue issue the confirm
command in 10 minutes, your system will reboot into previous config revision.
vyos@router# set interfaces ethernet eth0 firewall 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]
Note
A reboot because you did not enter confirm
will not take you necessarily to the saved configuration, but to the point before the unfortunate commit.
copy
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
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
}
}
comment <config node> "comment text"
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 commited, 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.
When inside configuration mode you are not directly able to execute operational commands.
run
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
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.
Revisions are stored on disk. You can view, compare and rollback them to any previous revisions if something goes wrong.
show system commit
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
set system config-management commit-revisions <N>
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.
VyOS lets you compare different configurations.
compare <saved | N> <M>
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
-}
show system commit diff <number>
Show commit revision difference.
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
.
You can rollback configuration changes using the rollback command. This will apply the selected revision and trigger a system reboot.
rollback <N>
Rollback to revision N (currently requires reboot)
vyos@vyos# compare 1
[edit system]
>host-name vyos-1
[edit]
vyos@vyos# rollback 1
Proceed with reboot? [confirm][y]
Broadcast message from root@vyos-1 (pts/0) (Tue Dec 17 21:07:45 2013):
The system is going down for reboot NOW!
VyOS can upload the configuration to a remote location after each call to commit
. You will have to set the commit-archive location. TFTP, FTP, SCP and SFTP servers are supported. Every time a commit
is successfull the config.boot
file will be copied to the defined destination(s). The filename used on the remote host will be config.boot-hostname.YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS
.
set system config-management commit-archive location <URI>
Specify remote location of commit archive as any of the below URI (Uniform Resource Identifier)
scp://<user>:<passwd>@<host>:/<dir>
sftp://<user>:<passwd>@<host>/<dir>
ftp://<user>:<passwd>@<host>/<dir>
tftp://<host>/<dir>
Note
The number of revisions don't affect the commit-archive.
Note
You may find VyOS not allowing the secure connection because it cannot verify the legitimacy of the remote server. You can use the workaround below to quickly add the remote host's SSH fingerprint to your ~/.ssh/known_hosts
file:
vyos@vyos# ssh-keyscan <host> >> ~/.ssh/known_hosts
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:
load <URI>
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
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
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.