BIRD(8)

📦
version 1.6.8 · 3 versions
, in ubuntu jammy

💖 BIRD(8) — the BIRD User Manual, but make it a group chat 💖

okay bestie, pull up a chair, because this is the manual page for BIRD and its little remote-control besties — and we are going to get you fluent in it. ✨

🌸 NAME 🌸

  • bird — the BIRD Internet Routing Daemon itself, the main character 👑
  • birdc — the BIRD Internet Routing Daemon remote control
  • bird6 — the BIRD Internet Routing Daemon, but the IPv6 version 🦋
  • birdc6 — the BIRD Internet Routing Daemon remote control, IPv6 version 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

no cap, here's the whole vibe in one look:

bird [-c config-file] [-d] [-D debug-file] [-p] [-s control-socket]

birdc [-s control-socket] [-v] [-r]

bird6 [-c config-file] [-d] [-D debug-file] [-p] [-s control-socket]

birdc6 [-s control-socket] [-v] [-r]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

so bird is an Internet Routing Daemon. which sounds intense and honestly it is — it sends and receives messages using different protocols so it can discover and exchange routing information with the other routing daemons chillin' on the same network. 🌐 it speaks the most widely known routing protocols — we're talking BGPv4, RIPv2, OSPFv2 and OSPFv3 — and it does it both on IPv4 and IPv6. plus it has a very powerful language for route filtering, which is the part that makes people go feral. 🔥

birdc is the remote control for bird. the way that while bird is running, the system administrator can connect to it with birdc to peek at its internal status and reconfigure it — it's giving "walking into the server room and rearranging the furniture" energy. 🚪✨ the two processes talk over a Unix socket, like two besties passing notes. once you've started it, bird hands you an interactive shell: commands complete with TAB 🫶 and you can ask for help by pressing the key ?. more documentation on the available commands lives on the website, see below. 💖

bird6 and birdc6 are the exact equivalent of bird and birdc for the IPv6 world. they accept the same command syntax with the same meaning — same girl, different era. 💅

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

🐦 for bird and bird6

these two are able to receive these options:

  • -c config-file — use the given configuration file instead of the default /etc/bird/bird.conf. 📄
  • -d — enable debug messages and run bird in the foreground. no hiding in the background, we're being perceived. 👀
  • -D debug-file — log all that debugging information to the given file instead of standard error. 🗂️
  • -p — just parse the config file and exit, that's it, that's the whole job. 🧘 the return value is zero if the config file is valid, and nonzero if there are some errors.
  • -s control-socket — use the given filename for the socket used to communicate with the client (the remote control, bestie). the default is /var/run/bird.ctl. 🔌

🕹️ for birdc and birdc6

these two are able to receive these options:

  • -s control-socket — use the given filename for the socket used to communicate with the server. default is /var/run/bird.ctl. 🔌
  • -r — run birdc in restricted mode: only the show ... commands are allowed. it's giving "look but don't touch". 🙈
lowkey important: in restricted mode, only show ... commands get through. that's the whole boundary. respect it.
  • -v — numeric return codes get dumped along with messages, which makes them easily parsable by a program. 🧮 see the programmer's documentation for info about what those numbers actually mean.

🗂️ FILES 🗂️

  • /etc/bird/bird.conf — the system-wide configuration file that controls the behaviour of bird. see the website for more documentation. 📄
  • /etc/bird/bird6.conf — the system-wide configuration file that controls the behaviour of bird6. see the website for more documentation. 📄

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

more documentation can be found on the website: http://bird.network.cz/. 🌐✨

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Giovanni Mascellani <mascellani@poisson.phc.unipi.it> — wrote this manpage for the Debian system. 🫶 thank you king.

Copyright © 2010 Giovanni Mascellani

this manual page was written for the Debian system (and may be used by others).

permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2 or (at your option) any later version published by the Free Software Foundation. ⚖️

on Debian systems, the complete text of the GNU General Public License can be found in /usr/share/common-licenses/GPL. 📚

and that's the whole page bestie, no notes, we ate that. 💅 this was bird, version dated 01/02/2021, from the BIRD User Manual (that's BIRD(8) to the section-heading girlies) — go be a routing daemon main character. 🦋💖✨

📦 where this page comes from