Display Running Lab Instances
netlab status command displays the running lab instances and the provider-specific workloads (libvirt virtual machines or containerlab containers).
This command uses the netlab status file (default: ~/.netlab/status.yml) to get the state of running lab instances and provider-specific status commands to get the workload state. The status file is updated by netlab up and netlab down commands.
Usage
usage: netlab status [-h] [-l] [--cleanup] [--reset] [--format {json,yaml,text}]
[--memory] [--all] [-v] [-q] [-i INSTANCE]
Display lab status
options:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-l, --log Display the lab instance event log
--cleanup Cleanup the current or specified lab instance
--reset Reset the lab instance tracking system
--format {json,yaml,text}
Specify the output format
--memory Include memory utilization statistics
--all Display an overview of all lab instance(s)
-v, --verbose Verbose logging (add multiple flags for increased verbosity)
-q, --quiet Report only major errors
-i, --instance INSTANCE
Specify the lab instance to inspect
netlab status displays the status and workload (VMs or containers) of the current or selected lab instance. Add the –memory option to include VM/container memory utilization.
netlab status –all displays an overview of all currently running lab instances.
netlab status –log displays the detailed status log (including state changes and executed commands) of the current or selected lab instance(s)
netlab status –cleanup shuts down selected lab instance(s). It changes the current directory to the lab directory saved in the status file and executes netlab down –cleanup in that directory
netlab status –reset deletes the status file. Use this command only if the status file becomes corrupted.
Tip
You can use the --format json or --format yaml option to display the lab status in an automation-friendly format
Display Lab Instance State
The netlab status command displays the selected lab instance and its VMs and containers:
Lab default in /home/user
status: started
topology: /home/user/tools/tests/integration/bgp/04-originate.yml
provider(s): libvirt,clab
┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ node ┃ device ┃ image ┃ mgmt IP ┃ connection ┃ provider ┃ VM/container ┃ status ┃
┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ dut │ arubacx │ aruba/cx │ 192.168.121.101 │ network_cli │ libvirt │ bgp_dut │ running │
├──────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────┼──────────────┼────────────┤
│ dut2 │ arubacx │ aruba/cx │ 192.168.121.102 │ network_cli │ libvirt │ bgp_dut2 │ running │
├──────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────┼──────────────┼────────────┤
│ x1 │ frr │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:10.6.1 │ 192.168.121.103 │ docker │ clab │ clab-bgp-x1 │ Up 3 hours │
├──────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────┼──────────────┼────────────┤
│ x2 │ frr │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:10.6.1 │ 192.168.121.104 │ docker │ clab │ clab-bgp-x2 │ Up 3 hours │
├──────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────┼──────────────┼────────────┤
│ r1 │ frr │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:10.6.1 │ 192.168.121.105 │ docker │ clab │ clab-bgp-r1 │ Up 3 hours │
└──────┴─────────┴──────────────────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────┴──────────┴──────────────┴────────────┘
With the --memory option, the printout includes the VM/container memory utilization:
Lab default in /home/user
status: started
topology: /home/user/tools/tests/integration/bgp/04-originate.yml
provider(s): libvirt,clab
memory used: 3.473GiB
┏━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ node ┃ device ┃ image ┃ mgmt IP ┃ connection ┃ provider ┃ VM/container ┃ status ┃ memory ┃
┡━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ dut │ arubacx │ aruba/cx │ 192.168.121.101 │ network_cli │ libvirt │ bgp_dut │ running │ 1.708GiB │
├──────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────┼──────────────┼────────────┼──────────┤
│ dut2 │ arubacx │ aruba/cx │ 192.168.121.102 │ network_cli │ libvirt │ bgp_dut2 │ running │ 1.692GiB │
├──────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────┼──────────────┼────────────┼──────────┤
│ x1 │ frr │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:10.6.1 │ 192.168.121.103 │ docker │ clab │ clab-bgp-x1 │ Up 3 hours │ 22.66MiB │
├──────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────┼──────────────┼────────────┼──────────┤
│ x2 │ frr │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:10.6.1 │ 192.168.121.104 │ docker │ clab │ clab-bgp-x2 │ Up 3 hours │ 22.63MiB │
├──────┼─────────┼──────────────────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────┼──────────┼──────────────┼────────────┼──────────┤
│ r1 │ frr │ quay.io/frrouting/frr:10.6.1 │ 192.168.121.105 │ docker │ clab │ clab-bgp-r1 │ Up 3 hours │ 29.77MiB │
└──────┴─────────┴──────────────────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────┴──────────┴──────────────┴────────────┴──────────┘
Tip
netlab status executes vagrant status –machine-readable to get the status of Vagrant-controlled virtual machines and docker ps to get the status of running containers. The vagrant status might take a few seconds when executed on large labs and significantly longer if Vagrant cannot determine the state of a virtual machine (returning inaccessible).
netlab status –memory executes virsh domstats and docker stats. At least the docker stats command is not blazingly fast.
The virsh domstats reports the Resident Set Size (RSS) of the QEMU process running the virtual machine (the physical RAM allocation), not the amount of virtual RAM allocated to the virtual machine.
With Linux Kernel Samepage Merging (KSM) enabled, the reported memory utilization overstates the real usage.
Display Lab Instance Log
The netlab status –log command displays a detailed lab instance log, including state changes and executed commands:
$ netlab status --log
Lab default in /home/pipi/net101/tools/X
status: started
provider(s): clab
2024-03-21T15:49:53.405969+00:00: OK: containerlab version
2024-03-21T15:49:53.428919+00:00: OK: bash -c [[ `containerlab version|awk '/version/ {print $2}'` > '0.42' ]] && echo OK
2024-03-21T15:49:53.430807+00:00: restarting lab
2024-03-21T15:49:53.432369+00:00: starting provider clab
2024-03-21T15:49:56.009208+00:00: OK: sudo -E containerlab deploy -t clab.yml
2024-03-21T15:49:56.011297+00:00: clab workload started
2024-03-21T15:49:56.014699+00:00: deploying initial configuration
2024-03-21T15:49:56.405222+00:00: deploying configuration: complete configuration
2024-03-21T15:50:01.851112+00:00: OK: ansible-playbook /home/pipi/net101/tools/netsim/ansible/initial-config.ansible
2024-03-21T15:50:01.893476+00:00: OK: netlab initial --no-message
2024-03-21T15:50:01.895433+00:00: initial configuration complete
2024-03-21T15:50:01.897105+00:00: started
Running Lab Instances
The netlab status –all command displays all running lab instances[1], their working directories, and the virtual machines (domains) and containers running on the current server.
$ netlab status --all
Active lab instance(s)
┏━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ id ┃ directory ┃ status ┃ providers ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ default │ /home/pipi/net101/tools/X │ started │ clab │
└─────────┴───────────────────────────┴─────────┴───────────┘
Cleanup a Lab Instance
The netlab status cleanup instance command shuts down the specified lab instance:
$ netlab status --cleanup
Cleanup will remove lab instance "default" in /home/user/net101/tools/X. Are you sure? [y/n]y
Shutting down lab default in /home/user/net101/tools/X
Read transformed lab topology from snapshot file netlab.snapshot.pickle
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CHECKING virtualization provider installation │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
[SUCCESS] clab installed and working correctly
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ STOPPING clab nodes │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
INFO[0000] Parsing & checking topology file: clab.yml
INFO[0000] Destroying lab: X
INFO[0000] Removed container: clab-X-host-2
INFO[0000] Removed container: clab-X-spine-2
INFO[0000] Removed container: clab-X-leaf-3
INFO[0000] Removed container: clab-X-spine-1
INFO[0000] Removed container: clab-X-leaf-1
INFO[0001] Removed container: clab-X-leaf-2
INFO[0001] Removed container: clab-X-host-1
INFO[0001] Removed container: clab-X-leaf-4
INFO[0001] Removing containerlab host entries from /etc/hosts file
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ CLEANUP configuration files │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
... removing clab.yml
... removing directory tree clab_files
... removing ansible.cfg
... removing hosts.yml
... removing directory tree group_vars
... removing directory tree host_vars
... removing netlab.snapshot.yml
... removing netlab.snapshot.pickle