Start, Stop, or Pause Individual Lab Nodes

The netlab node command starts, stops, restarts, pauses, or unpauses individual nodes in a running lab without affecting the rest of the lab.

Warning

  • netlab node works only with containerlab nodes.

  • A restarted container loses the device configuration deployed by netlab. netlab node up and netlab node restart therefore run netlab initial (or netlab config –reload) on the affected nodes unless you use the --no-config flag.

Usage

usage: netlab node [-h] [-v] [-q] [--dry-run] [--no-config] [-r RELOAD] [-i INSTANCE]
                   {up,down,restart,pause,unpause} node [node ...]

Start, stop, restart, pause, or unpause individual lab nodes

positional arguments:
  {up,down,restart,pause,unpause}
                        Action to execute on the selected nodes
  node                  Node(s) to act on (node names, groups, or globs; separate them with spaces or commas)

options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose         Verbose logging (add multiple flags for increased verbosity)
  -q, --quiet           Report only major errors
  --dry-run             Print the commands that would be executed, but do not execute them
  --no-config           Do not configure the started nodes
  -r RELOAD, --reload-config RELOAD
                        Reload saved configurations from specified directory
  -i INSTANCE, --instance INSTANCE
                        Specify the lab instance to change nodes in

The netlab node command takes these parameters:

  • The action to execute:

    • down stops the node container (containerlab stop)

    • up starts a stopped node container and reconnects its links (containerlab start)

    • restart stops and starts the node container (containerlab restart)

    • pause freezes all processes in the node container (docker pause)

    • unpause resumes a paused node container (docker unpause)

  • A list of nodes: node names, group names, or globs, separated by spaces or commas.

Notes:

  • netlab node reads the transformed lab topology from the netlab.snapshot.pickle file created by netlab up or netlab create. Unmanaged nodes are ignored.

  • After starting or restarting the nodes, netlab node deploys the initial device configuration with netlab initial –limit nodes. Use --no-config to skip this step, or --reload-config _directory_ to reload saved configurations with netlab config –reload instead.

  • With the --instance flag, you can change nodes in a lab instance running in a different directory.

  • netlab status displays the state of stopped and paused containers.

  • Routing protocol sessions with a paused node might time out.

Examples

$ netlab node down r1
$ netlab node up r1
$ netlab node restart r1 r2 --no-config
$ netlab node pause r1,r2