FRR-VRRPD(8)

📦
version 10.7.1 · 23 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💅 FRR-VRRPD — the VRRP girlie of FRRouting ✨

okay so bestie, you've found the man page for frr-vrrpd, which is a VRRP routing engine made to vibe with FRRouting. That's the whole NAME situation, and we're already off to a slay start.

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

vrrpd [-h] [-v]

vrrpd [-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]

Look at those flags. Iconic. We're gonna go through every single one, no cap.

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So vrrpd is a routing component that works with the FRRouting routing engine, and it implements the Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol. Support for both VRRPv2 and VRRPv3 is present, because why choose one when you can have both, fr fr. 👑

✨ OPTIONS ✨

These are the OPTIONS available for the vrrpd command. Buckle up, there's a lot, and honestly? every one of them ate.

🎀 HELP AND VERSION

  • -h, --help — prints a short lil description of the daemon's command line options. Your girl's whole personality in a nutshell.
  • -v, --version — prints version and build info for the daemon.
💀 Heads up bestie: both of these options inhibit normal operation and will immediately exit. They do not want to hang out, they want to leave. Respect it.

🔥 PROCESS CONTROL

These options control background operation, aka whether your daemon is a main character on screen or lurking backstage:

  • -d, --daemon — launches the process in background/daemon mode, forking and detaching 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. Periodt — that's a promise, not a maybe.

  • -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 ^keypress.)

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. She said I'm out. 🌈

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 protocol daemon itself (which runs in a separate second process.) So you can pause the chat window without ending the friendship. 🫶

🧚 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. It's giving collaborative.

  • -C, --dryrun — load the configuration file and check its validity, then exit. The vibe check of config files, honestly.
  • -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 zebra 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. No exclusivity here, everybody's in the same group chat.
  • -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. So pick your name carefully bestie.

Note that this only changes the respective defaults, it has no effect on the respective path if the -f, -i, -z or --vty_socket options are used.

The purpose of this option is to easily group all file system related 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. Parallel universes, basically. They don't know each other, they don't text each other. 💜

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. Living dangerously, okay.
⚠️ Note that there is an additional group, frrvty, which controls group ownership of the VTY sockets. The name of this group cannot currently be changed, and user must be a member of this group. Non-negotiable, she's not taking new names.

🍓 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. Two ways to slide into her DMs. ✨

  • -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. She's an open book, for better or worse.
  • -P, --vty_port vty-port — override the daemon's default TCP VTY port (each daemon has a different default value upwards of 2600, listed below.) Specifying 0 disables the TCP VTY interface. Bye then! 👋

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. Not vrrpd's. Not yours. Don't touch.
  • --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. Default: /var/run/frr[/<pathspace>]
💀 NB: Unlike the other options, this option specifies a directory, not a full path. Read that twice bestie.

This option is primarily used by the SNAP packaging system, its semantics may change. It should not be necessary in most other scenarios.

🧁 MODULE LOADING

frr supports optional dynamically loadable modules, although these can only be loaded at startup. The set of available modules may vary across distributions and packages, and modules may be available for installation as separate packages. It's giving exclusivity drop. 🎀

  • -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. Pick your fighter and she'll match your energy. 💅

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. (But cute that you cared.)

  • --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.) Pathspace can't touch this one, she's independent.

The list of loaded modules can be inspected at runtime with the show modules VTY command. Go check on your babies. 🥰

🌈 FILES 🌈

  • /usr/lib/frr/vrrpd — the default location of the vrrpd binary.
  • /etc/frr/vrrpd.conf — the default location of the vrrpd config file.
  • $(PWD)/vrrpd.log — if the vrrpd process is configured to output logs to a file, then you will find this file in the directory where you started vrrpd.

⚠️ WARNING ⚠️

This man page is intended to be a quick reference for command line options. The definitive document is the info file frr latest or the documentation available on the project website at https://frrouting.org/. This page is the group chat summary, the real docs are the full conversation, iykyk.

🩺 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. She will tell you what's wrong, you just have to listen. 🙈

👯 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), and https://frrouting.org/. The whole squad. The friend group. Show them some love too. 🫶

💀 BUGS 💀

FRR eats bugs for breakfast. If you have food for the maintainers, please email <dev@lists.frrouting.org>. They are hungry, bestie, feed them. 🍓

2017, FRR

okay so that's the whole page, you're officially educated, go configure something iconic. this was latest from Sep 22, 2026 for FRR-VRRPD(8) — bye bestie, slay responsibly. 💖✨🎀🦋

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