FRR-ZEBRA(8) FRR FRR-ZEBRA(8) NAME frr-zebra - a routing manager for use with associated FRRouting components. SYNOPSIS zebra [-h] [-v] zebra [-d|-t|-dt] [-C] [-f config-file] [-i pid-file] [-z zclient-path] [-u user] [-g group] [-A vty-addr] [-P vty-port] [-M module[:options]] [-N pathspace] [--vty_socket vty-path] [--moduledir module-path] DESCRIPTION zebra is a routing manager that implements the zebra route engine. zebra supports all protocol daemons in the FRRouting suite. OPTIONS OPTIONS available for the zebra command: HELP AND VERSION -h, --help Print a short description of the daemon's command line options. -v, --version Print version and build information for the daemon. Both of these options inhibit normal operation and will immediately exit. PROCESS CONTROL These options control background operation: -d, --daemon Launches the process in background/daemon mode, forking and de- taching from the terminal. The parent process will delay its exit until the daemon/child has finished its initialization and has entered its main loop. This is important for zebra startup because the other daemons will attempt to connect to zebra. A return from zebra -d guarantees its readiness to accept these connections. -t, --terminal Opens an interactive VTY session on the terminal, allowing for both state and configuration operations. Note that the terminal starts operating after startup has completed and the configuration file has been loaded. The process will exit when end of file is detected on the terminal. It is possible to daemonize a process started with -t (but without -d) by sending SIGQUIT to the process (normally mapped to a ^key- press.) The combination of --daemon and --terminal will delay the daemon from going into background until the terminal session ends (by end of file.) If the process receives SIGINT (e.g. a ^C keypress) in this mode, it will exit instead of daemonizing. It is safe to suspend (SIGTSTP / ^Z) the terminal session opened by the previous two options; this will only stop the terminal but not the proto- col daemon itself (which runs in a separate second process.) CONFIGURATION AND PATHS The following options control configuration and file system locations for frr processes: -f, --config_file config-file Specify a configuration file to be used instead of the default /etc/frr/<daemon>.conf file. Note that the daemon will attempt to write to this file if the write file command is issued on its VTY interface or through vtysh. -C, --dryrun Load the configuration file and check its validity, then exit. -i, --pid_file pid-file Output a pid file to a location other than the default /var/run/frr/<daemon>.pid. -z, --socket zclient-path Override the path of the ZAPI socket used to communicate between ze- bra and the various protocol daemons. The default is /var/run/frr/zserv.api. The value of this option must be the same across all daemons. -N, --pathspace pathspace Insert pathspace into all default paths, changing the defaults to: /etc/frr/pathspace/<daemon>.conf /var/run/frr/pathspace/<daemon>.pid /var/run/frr/pathspace/<daemon>.vty /var/run/frr/pathspace/zserv.api '.' and '/' characters will not be accepted in pathspace, but the empty string will be accepted. Note that this only changes the respective defaults, it has no ef- fect on the respective path if the -f, -i, -z or --vty_socket op- tions are used. The purpose of this option is to easily group all file system re- lated bits together for running multiple fully-separate "logical routers" on a system, particularly with Linux network namespaces. Groups of daemons running with distinct pathspace values will be completely unaware of each other and not interact in any way. This option does not do any system setup (like network namespaces.) This must be done by the user, for example by running: ip netns exec namespace <daemon> -N namespace PROCESS CREDENTIALS -u, --user user (default: frr) -g, --group group (default: frr) Change the user/group which the daemon will switch to. -S, --skip_runas Skip setting the process effective user and group. Note that there is an additional group, frrvty, which controls group owner- ship of the VTY sockets. The name of this group cannot currently be changed, and user must be a member of this group. VTY SETUP These following options control the daemon's VTY (interactive command line) interface. The interface is available over TCP, using the telnet protocol, as well as through the vtysh frontend. -A, --vty_addr vty-addr Specify an IP/IPv6 address to bind the TCP VTY interface to. It is generally recommended to specify ::1 or 127.0.0.1. For reasons of backwards compatibility, the default is to listen on all interfaces. -P, --vty_port vty-port Override the daemon's default TCP VTY port (each daemon has a dif- ferent default value upwards of 2600, listed below.) Specifying 0 disables the TCP VTY interface. Default ports are:: zebra 2601 ripd 2602 ripngd 2603 ospfd 2604 bgpd 2605 ospf6d 2606 isisd 2608 babeld 2609 nhrpd 2610 pimd 2611 ldpd 2612 eigrpd 2613 pbrd 2615 staticd 2616 bfdd 2617 fabricd 2618 vrrpd 2619 Port 2607 is used for ospfd's Opaque LSA API. --vty_socket vty-path Overrides the directory used for the <daemon>.vty sockets. vtysh connects to these sockets in order to access each daemon's VTY. De- fault: /var/run/frr[/<pathspace>] NB: Unlike the other options, this option specifies a directory, not a full path. This option is primarily used by the SNAP packaging system, its se- mantics may change. It should not be necessary in most other sce- narios. MODULE LOADING frr supports optional dynamically loadable modules, although these can only be loaded at startup. The set of available modules may vary across distri- butions and packages, and modules may be available for installation as sep- arate packages. -M, --module module[:options] Load a module named module, optionally passing options to it. If there is a '/' character in module, the value is assumed to be a pathname to a module. If there is no '/' character, the module directory (see next option) is searched first for a module named "<daemon>_<module>.so", then for "<module>.so". This allows for a module to exist in variations appropriate for particular daemons, e.g. zebra_snmp and bgp_snmp, with the correct one selected by -M snmp. The meaning of options is specific to the module being loaded. Most modules currently ignore it. Modules are loaded in the order as listed on the command line. This is not generally relevant. --moduledir module-path Look for modules in the module-path directory instead of the default /usr/lib/frr/modules. (This path is not affected by the -N option.) The list of loaded modules can be inspected at runtime with the show mod- ules VTY command. -b, --batch Runs in batch mode, zebra parses its config and exits. -s, --nl-bufsize <netlink-buffer-size> Set netlink receive buffer size. There are cases where zebra daemon can't handle flood of netlink messages from kernel. If you ever see "recvmsg overrun" messages in zebra log, you are in trouble. Solution is to increase receive buffer of netlink socket. Note that kernel < 2.6.14 doesn't allow increasing it over maximum value de- fined in /proc/sys/net/core/rmem_max. If you want to do it, you have to increase maximum before starting zebra. Note that this affects Linux only. -n, --vrfwnetns Enable namespace VRF backend. By default, the VRF backend relies on VRF-lite support from the Linux kernel. This option permits discov- ering Linux named network namespaces and mapping it to FRR VRF con- texts. ROUTES -r, --retain When the program terminates, do not flush routes installed by zebra from the kernel. -R, --routing-table <tableno> Specify which kernel routing table Zebra should communicate with. If this option is not specified the default table (RT_TABLE_MAIN) is used. FILES /usr/lib/frr/zebra The default location of the zebra binary. /etc/frr/zebra.conf The default location of the zebra config file. $(PWD)/zebra.log If the zebra process is configured to output logs to a file, then you will find this file in the directory where you started zebra. WARNING This man page is intended to be a quick reference for command line options. The definitive document is the info file frr 9.1.3 or the documentation available on the project website at https://frrouting.org/. DIAGNOSTICS The daemon may log to standard output, to a VTY, to a log file, or through syslog to the system logs. FRR supports many debugging options, see the Info file, web docs or source for details. SEE ALSO frr-zebra(8), vtysh(1), frr-ripd(8), frr-ripngd(8), frr-ospfd(8), frr-ospf6d(8), frr-bgpd(8), frr-isisd(8), frr-babeld(8), frr-nhrpd(8), frr-pimd(8), frr-pbrd(8), frr-ldpd(8), frr-eigrpd(8), frr-staticd(8), frr-fabricd(8), frr-vrrpd(8), mtracebis(8) https://frrouting.org/ BUGS FRR eats bugs for breakfast. If you have food for the maintainers, please email <dev@lists.frrouting.org>. COPYRIGHT 2017, FRR 9.1.3 Sep 01, 2026 FRR-ZEBRA(8)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | FILES | WARNING | DIAGNOSTICS | SEE ALSO | BUGS | COPYRIGHT
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