Basic System Information¶

The TNSR CLI can set several basic elements about the system itself, which also serves as a good introduction to making changes on TNSR. These settings are made in config mode.

Tip

These values are also propagated to SNMP, if configured. See Simple Network Management Protocol for information on setting up SNMP.

The following parameters are available:

system banner <end-character>:

Enters a multi-line input mode to store a new banner message TNSR will display when the user logs into the operating system. This message appears under the TNSR logo during login.

To end the multi-line input for the banner text, enter the <end-character> alone on a line.

system contact <text>:

System contact information, such as an e-mail address or telephone number (sysContact in SNMP).

system description <text>:

A brief description of this TNSR instance, for example its role or other identifying information (sysDescr in SNMP).

system location <text>:

The location of this TNSR instance, for example a physical location such as a building name, room number, rack number/position, or VM host (sysLocation in SNMP).

system name <text>:

The hostname of this TNSR instance (sysName in SNMP).

Warning

This setting also changes the hostname in the host operating system to match, replacing any previously configured hostname.

See also

This section of the CLI also contains a command which modifies the boot-time kernel command line parameters. That is an advanced task and as such it is covered in another section: Kernel Command Line Arguments.

This example shows how to set the above parameters, starting from basic mode:

gw tnsr# configure
gw tnsr(config)# system banner .
Enter TEXT message, 4096 characters maximum.  End with the character '.'
(4096)> First line of the new banner.
(4066)> Line of the banner which comes second.
(4027)> And this is the third line of the banner.
(3985)> .
gw tnsr(config)# system contact support@example.com
gw tnsr(config)# system description TNSR Lab Router
gw tnsr(config)# system location HQ MDF/Rack 2 Top
gw tnsr(config)# system name labrtr01
labrtr01 tnsr(config)# exit

To view the values of these parameters, along with uptime and memory usage, use the show system command from either basic or config mode:

labrtr01 tnsr# show system
    description: TNSR Lab Router
    contact: support@example.com
    name: labrtr01
    location: HQ MDF/Rack 2 Top
    login-banner: First line of the new banner.
Line of the banner which comes second.
And this is the third line of the banner.

System Parameters:
    object-id: 1.3.6.1.4.1.13644
    uptime: 1303615 seconds
    total-ram: 8004488 KiB
    free-ram: 3236820 KiB
    total-swap: 2932732 KiB
    free-swap: 2932732 KiB

Platform:
    os-name: Linux
    os-release: 5.15.0-113-generic
    os-version: Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS (Jammy Jellyfish)
    machine: x86_64

Product:
    product-vendor: Netgate
    product-name: TNSR
    product-model: x
    product-serial: 0

System DNS Resolution Behavior¶

The way TNSR and the host OS resolve hostnames via DNS can be fine-tuned if necessary. DNS resolution behavior has a separate configuration for each namespace (Networking Namespaces).

The default behavior in each namespace depends on the interface configuration. For example, if an interface is configured for DHCP, the DNS server supplied by the DHCP server will be used automatically.

DNS resolution behavior is configured using the system dns-resolver <namespace> command, which enters config-dns-resolver mode. In that mode, the following commands are available:

server <name> <ip-addr>:: Configures a DNS server IP address to be used as a forwarding DNS server in this namespace. This command may be repeated multiple times to configure multiple servers. The name parameter is for reference only.
search <domain>:: Configures a search domain, which is appended to hostnames without a domain name if a result is not found. This command may be repeated multiple times to configure multiple search domains.

DNS Resolution Examples¶

If Unbound is active and allows queries from 127.0.0.1, then the dataplane can be configured to use it as a DNS server:

tnsr(config)# system dns-resolver dataplane
tnsr(config-dns-resolver)# server localhost 127.0.0.1
tnsr(config-dns-resolver)# exit

Since the host namespace cannot access unbound running in the dataplane namespace, it must use a different external DNS server. Configure the host operating system namespace to use specific forwarding DNS servers directly as follows:

tnsr(config)# system dns-resolver host
tnsr(config-dns-resolver)# server g1 8.8.8.8
tnsr(config-dns-resolver)# server g2 8.8.4.4
tnsr(config-dns-resolver)# exit