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README v1.1.12 2025-11-05

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Table of contents

1. General
   1.1 Extract the NED package
   1.2 Install the NED package
       1.2.1 Local install
       1.2.2 System install
   1.3 Configure the NED in NSO
2. Optional debug and trace setup
3. Dependencies
4. Sample device configuration
5. Built in RPC actions
   5.1. rpc clean-package
   5.2. rpc export-package
   5.3. rpc get-modules
   5.4. rpc list-modules
   5.5. rpc list-profiles
   5.6. rpc rebuild-package
   5.7. rpc show-default-local-dir
   5.8. rpc show-loaded-schema
   5.9. rpc xpath-trace-analyzer
   5.7. live-status exec any
   5.8. live-status exec gnoi
6. Built in live-status show
7. Limitations
8. How to report NED issues and feature requests
9. How to rebuild a NED
10. Using the NED feature load-native-config

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1. General

This document describes the cisco-iosxr_gnmi NED.

This NED can be used together with Cisco IOSXR devices with gNMI support enabled.

It has been successfully tested with the following devices: - Cisco IOSXR version 7.8.2 and 7.10.1

IMPORTANT: This NED is delivered without any of the device YANG models bundled to the NED package.

It is required to download the YANG files separately and rebuild the NED package before the NED is fully operational. See the README-rebuild.md for further information.

The recommended way to do this is by following the steps below:

  1. Install and setup the NED. See chapter 1.1 to 1.3

  2. Download the YANG models. See chapter 1.1 in README-rebuild.md for the recommended method (alternatives are described in README-rebuild.md chapter 2 and 3).

  3. Rebuild the NED. See chapter 1.3 in README-rebuild.md (an alternative with a custom NED-ID is described in README-rebuild.md chapter 4).

  4. Reload the NED in NSO. See chapter 1.4 in README-rebuild.md

Additional README files bundled with this NED package

Common NED Features

Verified target systems

Verified YANG model bundles

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1.1 Extract the NED package

It is assumed the NED package ncs-<NSO version>-cisco-iosxr_gnmi-<NED version>.signed.bin has already been downloaded from software.cisco.com.

In this instruction the following example settings will be used:

  • NSO version: 6.0

  • NED version: 1.0.1

  • NED package downloaded to: /tmp/ned-package-store

  1. Extract the NED package and verify its signature:

  2. In case the signature can not be verified (for instance if no internet connection), do as below instead:

  3. The result of the extraction shall be a tar.gz file with the same name as the .bin file:

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1.2 Install the NED package

There are two alternative ways to install this NED package. Which one to use depends on how NSO itself is setup.

In the instructions below the following example settings will be used:

  • NSO version: 6.0

  • NED version: 1.0.1

  • NED download directory: /tmp/ned-package-store

  • NSO run time directory: ~/nso-lab-rundir

A prerequisite is to set the environment variable NSO_RUNDIR to point at the NSO run time directory:

IMPORTANT:

This NED is delivered as an “empty” package, i.e without any device YANG models bundled. It must be rebuilt with the device YANG models to become operational.

The procedure to rebuild the empty NED (described in the README-rebuild.md) shall typically be done in a lab environment. For this step a “local install” of the NED shall be used. It is not suitable to use “system install” here since it is intended for production systems only.

Once this NED has been rebuilt with the device YANG and exported to one or many separate tar.gz customized NED packages, a “system installation” can be used on them.

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1.2.1 Local install

This section describes how to install a NED package on a locally installed NSO (see "NSO Local Install" in the NSO Installation guide).

It is assumed the NED package has been been unpacked to a tar.gz file as described in 1.1.

  1. Untar the tar.gz file. This creates a new sub-directory named: cisco-iosxr_gnmi-<NED major digit>.<NED minor digit>:

  2. Install the NED into NSO, using the ncs-setup tool:

  3. Open a NSO CLI session and load the new NED package like below:

Alternatively the tar.gz file can be installed directly into NSO. Then skip steps 1 and 2 and do like below instead:

Set the environment variable NED_ROOT_DIR to point at the NSO NED package:

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1.2.2 System install

This section describes how to install a NED package on a system installed NSO (see "NSO System Install" in the NSO Installation Guide).

It is assumed the NED package has been been unpacked to a tar.gz file as described in 1.1.

  1. Do a NSO backup before installing the new NED package:

  2. Start a NSO CLI session and fetch the NED package:

  3. Install the NED package (add the argument replace-existing if a previous version has been loaded):

  4. Load the NED package

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1.3 Configure the NED in NSO

This section describes the steps for configuring a device instance using the newly installed NED package.

  • Start a NSO CLI session:

  • Enter configuration mode:

  • Configure a new authentication group (my-group) to be used for this device:

  • Configure a new device instance (example: dev-1):

    IMPORTANT:

    The device-type shall always be set to generic when configuring a device instance to use a 3PY NED. A common mistake is configuring it as netconf, which will cause NSO to use its internal netconf client instead.

Additional configurations

TLS

Set up TLS configurables if needed. The Cisco IOSXR devices typically has at least server certificate authentication enabled by default.

  • Enable TLS

  • Configure Server TLS authentication

Alternative 1: Accept any SSL certificate presented by the device. This is unsafe and should only be used for testing purposes.

Alternative 2: Configure a specific trust manager certificate for the device. Specify the path to the certificate file used by the device.

Enter the multi line content of a PEM formatted CA/server certificate. Including the -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- banners etc.

Finish with a -

Use the Unix tool 'openssl' to fetch the PEM certificate from a device:

Optional TLS settings

  • Configure TLS certificate authority overrides

  • Configure the NED for mutual TLS

Enter the multi line content of a PEM formatted client certificate. Including the -----BEGIN CERTIFICATE----- banners etc. Finish with a -d>

Enter the multi line content of a PEM formatted private key. Including the -----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY----- banners etc. Finish with a -d>

  • Configure TLS ciphers to be used for server/client TLS authentication

  • Finally commit the configuration

  • Verify configuration, using a sync-from.

If the sync-from was not successful, check the NED configuration again.

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2. Optional debug and trace setup

It is often desirable to see details from when and how the NED interacts with the device(Example: troubleshooting)

This can be achieved by configuring NSO to generate a trace file for the NED. A trace file contains information about all interactions with the device. Messages sent and received as well as debug printouts, depending on the log level configured.

NSO creates one separate trace file for each device instance with tracing enabled. Stored in the following location:

$NSO_RUNDIR/logs/ned-cisco-iosxr_gnmi-gen-1.0-<device name>.trace

Do as follows to enable tracing in one specific device instance in NSO:

  1. Start a NSO CLI session:

  2. Enter configuration mode:

  3. Enable trace raw:

    Alternatively, tracing can be enabled globally affecting all configured device instances:

  4. Configure the log level for printouts to the trace file:

    Alternatively the log level can be set globally affecting all configured device instances using this NED package.

The log level 'info' is used by default and the 'debug' level is the most verbose.

IMPORTANT: Tracing shall be used with caution. This feature does increase the number of IPC messages sent between the NED and NSO. In some cases this can affect the performance in NSO. Hence, tracing should normally be disabled in production systems.

An alternative method for generating printouts from the NED is to enable the Java logging mechanism. This makes the NED print log messages to common NSO Java log file.

$NSO_RUNDIR/logs/ncs-java-vm.log

Do as follows to enable Java logging in the NED

  1. Start a NSO CLI session:

  2. Enter configuration mode:

  3. Enable Java logging with level all from the NED package:

  4. Configure the NED to log to the Java logger

    Alternatively Java logging can be enabled globally affecting all configured device instances using this NED package.

IMPORTANT: Java logging does not use any IPC messages sent to NSO. Consequently, NSO performance is not affected. However, all log printouts from all log enabled devices are saved in one single file. This means that the usability is limited. Typically single device use cases etc.

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3. Dependencies

This NED has the following host environment dependencies:

  • Java 1.8 (NSO version < 6.2)

  • Java 17 (NSO version >= 6.2)

  • Gnu Sed

Dependencies for NED recompile:

  • Apache Ant

  • Bash

  • Gnu Sort

  • Gnu awk

  • Grep

  • Python3 (with packages: re, sys, getopt, subprocess, argparse, os, glob)

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4. Sample device configuration

The example below has been successfully verified using a Cisco IOSXR VM running version v24.3.1.

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5. Built in RPC actions

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5.1. rpc clean-package

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5.2. rpc export-package

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5.3. rpc get-modules

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5.4. rpc list-modules

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5.5. rpc list-profiles

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5.6. rpc rebuild-package

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5.7. rpc show-default-local-dir

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5.8. rpc show-loaded-schema

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5.9. rpc xpath-trace-analyzer

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5.7. live-status exec any

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exec any get

The NED supports a generic versatile get action which can be used for doing any type of read operation towards a Cisco IOSXR gNMI device.

Mandatory arguments

Optional arguments

Example

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5.8. live-status exec gnoi

The gRPC Network Operations Interface (gNOI) defines a set of gRPC-based services for executing operational commands on network devices. The gNOI command interface is supported on IOSXR 7.11.1 and later. Currently limited to the categories system and file. This NED supports a number of gNOI commands that can be executed on a IOSXR target.

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exec gnoi system

This container contains all system gNOI commands.

time

Check time on the device

ping

Execute ping on device

Mandatory arguments

Optional arguments

traceroute

Execute traceroute on device.

Mandatory arguments

Optional arguments

killProcess

Kill a process on the device. Either pid or process name must be specified

Mandatory arguments

Optional arguments

reboot

Reboot the device

Optional arguments

cancelReboot

Cancel reboot of the device.

Optional arguments

rebootStatus

Check reboot status on the device.

switchControlProcessor

Switch from the current route processor to the provided route processor.

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6. Built in live-status show

The Cisco IOSXR gNMI NED has full support for fetching operational data via the NSO live-status API.

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7. Limitations

This NED provides a gNMI client which is gNMI protocol level compliant with Cisco IOS XR for actions like reading data, deploying config and rpc:s.

The gNMI agent running on IOS XR is still very much under continuous development. This includes the behaviour on gNMI protocol level. Hence, some additional adaptions of the NED might be necessary when used with older versions of IOS XR. This can usually be done through the NED settings available for customization or the protocol behaviour.

The NED has been tested using a set of config samples based on customer use cases.

Issues related to deploying config are usually caused by new currently unknown behaviour in the IOS XR gNMI agent for certain config nodes. If this happens further adaptions of the NED are usually necessary. It is encouraged to contact the Cisco NED team for help in any such matter. Create a support case with a description of the issue and the use case.

Cisco IOS XR up to version 7.11.1 has the following limitations directly affecting the NED operation:

  • gNOI file download is supported but broken. Can not be used for YANG model download

  • gNMI telemetry of type STREAM/SAMPLE is sent out in a scattered way. The device is however not able to signal when all fragments for a sample have been transmitted. So NED telemetry gathering feature can not be used.

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8. How to report NED issues and feature requests

Issues like bugs and errors shall always be reported to the Cisco NSO NED team through the Cisco Support channel:

The following information is required for the Cisco NSO NED team to be able to investigate an issue:

Do as follows to gather the necessary information needed for your device, here named 'dev-1':

  1. Enable full debug logging in the NED

  2. Configure the NSO to generate a raw trace file from the NED

  3. If the NED already had trace enabled, clear it in order to submit only relevant information

    Do as follows for NSO 6.4 or newer:

    Do as follows for older NSO versions:

  4. Run a compare-config to populate the trace with initial device config

  5. Reproduce the found issue using ncs_cli or your NSO service. Write down each necessary step in a reproduction report.

  6. Gather the reproduction report and a copy of the raw trace file containing data recorded when the issue happened.

  7. Contact the Cisco support and request to open a case. Provide the gathered files together with access details for a device that can be used by the Cisco NSO NED when investigating the issue.

Requests for new features and extensions of the NED are handled by the Cisco NSO NED team when applicable. Such requests shall also go through the Cisco support channel.

The following information is required for feature requests and extensions:

  1. A detailed use case description, with details like:

    • Data of interest

    • The kind of operations to be used on the data. Like: 'read', 'create', 'update', 'delete' and the order of the operation

    • Device APIs involved in the operations (For example: REST URLs and payloads)

    • Device documentation describing the operations involved

  2. Run sync-from # devices device dev-1 sync-from (if relevant)

  3. Attach the raw trace to the ticket (if relevant)

  4. Access to a device that can be used by the Cisco NSO NED team for testing and verification of the new feature. This usually means that both read and write permissions are required. Pseudo access via tools like Webex, Zoom etc is not acceptable. However, it is ok with access through VPNs, jump servers etc.

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9. How to rebuild a NED

Check the README-rebuild.md file, chapter 1.3, for more information.

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10. Using the NED feature load-native-config

This NED has support for the load-native-config feature, meaning that you can load config directly from a file formatted in native device format. Since it is a gNMI NED it is required that the file is formatted as a gNMI SetRequest message, as specified here: https://github.com/openconfig/reference/blob/master/rpc/gnmi/gnmi-specification.md#341-the-setrequest-message

A gNMI SetRequest message is using a JSON structure containing three lists with the self explained names update, replace and delete. Each entry in the update and replace lists is a modify and/or create operation, represented by a gNMI path and a payload element. The latter is a JSON formatted string itself (in cleartext) describing the elements to be modified.

Each entry in the delete list is a delete operation represented by a gNMI path.

Optionally each gNMI SetRequest message can contain a prefix which is a gNMI path that will be prepended to all operations in the update, replace and delete lists.

Below is an example of a valid JSON structure that can be used for the load-native-commands feature.

The NSO command commit dry-run outformat native is an easy way to generate valid JSON snippets that can be used with the load-native-command feauture.

Example:

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