Ebtables

Ebtables is used for Ethernet bridge frame table administration on Linux. Python-ebtables is a simple Python binding for Ebtables.

If you are looking for iptables bindings, check python-iptables.

Build

You will need CFFI.

$ python setup.py build
[...]
$ python setup.py install
[...]

Check that you can import ebtables:

$ python
>>> import ebtables
>>>

Usage

Python-ebtables exposes an API that resembles the command line interface. For example:

>>> import ebtables
>>> rc, out, err = ebtables.nat('-L')
>>> rc
0
>>> print out.split('\n')
['Bridge table: nat', '', 'Bridge chain: PREROUTING, entries: 0, policy: ACCEPT', '', 'Bridge chain: OUTPUT, entries: 0, policy: ACCEPT', '', 'Bridge chain: POSTROUTING, entries: 0, policy: ACCEPT', '']
>>> err
''

Ebtables needs administrator privileges. However, if you don't want to run your python app as root, you only need the CAP_NET_RAW capability. For example:

$ sudo PATH=$PATH capsh --caps="cap_net_raw+p" -- -c "python"
[sudo] password for user:
Python 2.7.9 (default, Dec 11 2014, 08:58:12)
[GCC 4.9.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import ebtables
>>> ebtables.filter('-L')
(0, 'Bridge table: filter\n\nBridge chain: INPUT, entries: 0, policy: ACCEPT\n\nBridge chain: FORWARD, entries: 0, policy: ACCEPT\n\nBridge chain: OUTPUT, entries: 0, policy: ACCEPT\n', '')
>>>