Config Engine User Interface ​

The web user interface allows you to visualize your topology, inspect magic variables and transmit commands direclty from your favorite web browser.

Start the web server ​

The Config Engine UI can be started with the labctl serve command.

Once the server is started you should be able to open the suggested URLs with your browser

$ labctl serve -t topo.clab.yaml -p ./ --addr :8080
INFO[0000] Parsing & checking topology file: topo.clab.yaml
INFO[0000] Access the web server on http://localhost:8080 or http://10.10.56.51:8080

Labctl companion file ​

When you serve a topology, all the frontend settings, lab layout, label templates and more wil be saved in the same folder as the topology file. The companion file will be created automatically when required and a running server will persist frontend changes in this file.

Today only suggested commands options>commands cannot be edited from the frontend.

Topology view ​

The topology view should show up immediately.

Labels ​

You can create layers of labels.

Inspect variables ​

The Config Engine UI can show you the magic variables that will be used to render a template. From here you can test these variables on templates.

Consider the following topo file extract

nodes:
  R4:
    kind: vr-sros
    config:
      vars:
        clab_system_ip: 192.0.2.4/32
        ipv4_sid_label: 14004
        isis_iid:
          - 1

The Config Engine will use the following variables to render the template for R4. Split

Execute commands ​

You can execute "commit", "compare" and "send" commands directly from the UI - you use exactly the same syntax as from the commandline.

Config Engine related flags used on the commandline to serve the frontend

Flags available from within the UI to execute config commands

Examples ​

compare -l bgp -f R1

will compare the template named bgp__<role>.tmpl ONLY to node R1

commit -l bgp

will commit the template named bgp__<role>.tmpl to all nodes in the topology

send -l show-route-table -f R1,R2

will send the template show-route-table_<role>.tmpl to node R1 and R2 only

Suggested commands ​

You can add suggested commands to the project's README.md file. They will be displayed on the Config Engine 📖 screen.

You can use Markdown links with config commands, for example:

• [compare -l ports](config:)
• [commit -l ports](config:)
• [send -l show-route-table](config:)

You can also use path links to highlight paths on the topology

• [path 1](path:9,4,3,10)
• [path 2](path:9,4,11,12,10)
• [0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12](path:)

When you use empty config: or path: URLs in the markdown links, the links's Text will be used. That measn these links are the same:

• [compare -l ports](config:) == [compare -l ports](config:compare -l ports)