CLI Commands

Every command starts with its verb

show, clear, monitor, request, set, and delete are the six verbs. The words after the verb are the YANG path. A bare form with no verb is not in the command tree, and the dispatcher answers unknown command for it. daemon reload is now request reload, daemon status is show status, daemon quit is request halt, daemon shutdown is request shutdown, and bgp summary is show bgp summary.

stop, restart, and reboot are the exception, and they keep their bare spelling. The SSH exec middleware intercepts those three lifecycle verbs before the dispatcher, which registers no key for them.

Every subcommand of ze show, ze clear, ze monitor, ze request, ze set, and ze delete resolves against the daemon's own registrations. The verb-relative tree is built from the same registration set the dispatcher is keyed on, so the client and the daemon cannot disagree about which words are a command.

A local in-process handler is refused for any argv that reaches a declared command below it. show interface is registered at two words and takes an interface name, so brief, scan, type, errors, rate, and the two name <name> ... forms all go to the daemon rather than being read as interface names.

Peer selectors on a destructive command

One resolver answers the peer selector for every peer-scoped command. It accepts a name, an address, an ASN (as65001), or a prefix, so a selector that works on one verb works on all of them.

A command that acts on ONE peer refuses a wildcard (* or empty), refuses an exclusion selector (!edge1, !as65001, !10.0.0.0/24), and refuses a selector that matches more than one peer. It never guesses which peer was meant. An unresolvable selector is an error with the selector quoted, rather than a no-op reported as success. A show command that narrows a list still accepts an exclusion, because a complement is a good answer when the command filters rather than acts.

Positional arguments

Every declared argument kind takes part in positional matching, typed kinds included, and mandatory definitions are offered a token before optional ones. A uint16 port no longer skips its token and then fails with required argument missing, and an optional string can no longer starve a required argument of its value. One spare token becomes the peer selector when the command declares that it requires one, no selector arrived out of band, and exactly one token is spare, which is what makes delete bgp peer 127.0.0.1 work.

Protocol Tools

Configuration Management

Schema Discovery

Daemon Control

Each ze signal subcommand sends one SSH exec command to the daemon. reload sends request reload, status sends show status, and quit sends request halt. stop, restart, and reboot keep their bare spelling because the SSH exec middleware intercepts them before the dispatcher.

Runtime Interaction

Ping and traceroute: show ping and show traceroute run one-shot ICMP checks from the router itself using ze's internal engine -- no daemon required, they work as local handlers. monitor ping and monitor traceroute open a live, continuously-updating view (Ctrl-C to stop); pipe either through | log for scrollback, or add | resolve / | origin to enrich traceroute hops with reverse DNS or ASN info. size sets the ICMP payload length (1-65507), not the total packet: unlike ping(8)'s "64 bytes" (56 payload + 8 header), size 1400 sends 1400 payload bytes on top of the ICMP and IP headers. Both show ping and monitor ping take count (1-100) and size; omitting count on monitor ping is what makes it stream until Ctrl-C, and it additionally takes interval (100ms-30s).

ze show ping 8.8.8.8 count 5 timeout 3s
ze show ping 8.8.8.8 size 1400
ze show traceroute 8.8.8.8 max-hops 10 probes 1
ze cli -c "monitor ping 8.8.8.8 interval 500ms"
ze cli -c "monitor ping 8.8.8.8 count 5 size 1400"
ze cli -c "monitor traceroute 8.8.8.8 | log | resolve"

Live peer dashboard: monitor bgp in the interactive CLI opens a live dashboard showing router identity, a sortable colour-coded peer table with update rates, and a drill-down detail view. It refreshes every 2 seconds. Use j/k to move, s/S to sort, Enter for detail, and Esc to exit. The state column renders green for established, yellow for the transitional states, and red for stopped, idle, and idle-hold. idle-hold is the state a prefix limit leaves a peer in when the family that overflowed asked for no reconnect, so it needs an operator and is coloured like the other down states.

$ ssh ze-demo
ze# exit
ze> monitor bgp

The dashboard polls three local BGP sessions. Press "s" to sort by the next column, use the arrow keys to select a peer, and press Enter for live session details. Press Escape to return and "q" to leave the dashboard.

Commit confirmed: The editor supports commit confirmed <seconds> for safe remote changes. The config is applied immediately but auto-reverts if confirm is not issued within the timeout window (1-3600 seconds). Use confirm abort to revert manually. Modeled after Junos commit confirmed.

Command history persistence: Both ze config edit and ze cli persist command history to the zefs blob store. History survives application restarts, is stored per-mode (edit vs command) and per-user, with consecutive dedup and a configurable rolling window (default 100, max 10000). Graceful degradation when no blob store is available (in-memory only).

Login warnings: When an operator connects via SSH, ze checks for conditions requiring attention and displays warnings in the welcome area. Each warning includes a message and an actionable command. Currently checks for stale prefix data (peers with prefix-updated older than 6 months); run update bgp peer * prefix to refresh from PeeringDB.

Plugin debug shell: ze bgp plugin cli connects to the daemon via SSH, runs the 5-stage plugin handshake, and enters interactive command mode. Developers can test plugin protocol interactions by hand -- sending dispatch-command, subscribe-events, decode-nlri, etc. Accepts defaults (Enter through Q&A) or custom registration parameters (families, plugin name).

Other