Network Configuration Generator

This Web application is a simple configuration generator for network equipment like Routers and Switches.

It is based on python3 and the Flask microframework. If you like to know more about the Use Case and development of this Web service, take a look on the associated blog series "How to build your own configuration generator".

The following images shows an example configuration template and the associated variable definition.

Install the application

Please Note: All setup scripts assume that this Web service and the associated services like TFTP are the only service running on the server.

There are multiple ways to run this Web service:

• on a Linux server (recommended is Ubuntu 16.04)
• as a Vagrant VM (see Vagrantfile)
• on Raspberry PI (tested with raspbian/jessie)

The configuration of the Web service depends on the APP_SETTINGS environment variable. The following values are possible.

Configuration value	used for
config.DefaultConfig	default configuration
config.ProductionConfig	configuration for a production environment (recommended)
config.TestConfig	configuration for unit-tests
config.LiveServerTestConfig	configuration for selenium-tests

If the APP_SETTINGS variable is not set, the DefaultConfig is used. Furthermore, the SECRET_KEY variable is used to define a key value for the CSRF protection. Within a production environment, this key is dynamically created within the setup script.

on Ubuntu Linux (16.04)

To setup the Web service on a Ubuntu machine, use the following commands:

$ git clone https://github.com/hoelsner/network-config-generator.git network_config_generator
$ cd network_config_generator
$ ./setup_ubuntu.sh

Follow the instructions from the setup script.

Within the repository, you'll also find a Vagrantfile. To setup the Web service using Vagrant, use the following commands:

$ git clone https://github.com/hoelsner/network-config-generator.git network_config_generator
$ cd network_config_generator
$ vagrant up ncg

The setup script that is used in this case works totally unattended and will create a VM based on Ubuntu 16.04. It will also setup the FTP and TFTP service on the server.

on a Raspberry PI

During the development, I wrote a post about the use of a Raspberry PI as a Provisioning Appliance. At this point, I include a FTP and TFTP server to provide the configurations to the outside world. Furthermore, I add the Shell in a Box service and the Appliance Status view.

on your local machine

To run an instance on your local machine (for demo or testing), you need to execute the following steps:

1. clone the repository

$ git clone https://github.com/hoelsner/network-config-generator.git network_config_generator
$ cd network_config_generator

2. create a virtualenv and install python dependencies

$ virtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3 venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv) $ pip install -r requirements.txt

3. run the local server

(venv) $ python3 run_local.py
Initialize database...
Start the Network Configuration Generator on port 5000...

After this step, the Network Configuration Generator is running without any external service (no TFTP, no integration options).

If you like to use the "export to TFTP/FTP directory" (or any asynchronous action), you need to run a redis-server and celery worker thread on your local system. After installing the redis-server, execute the following command in another terminal window to start the celery worker thread:

(venv) $ export APP_SETTINGS=config.DefaultConfig
(venv) $ celery worker -A app.celery --loglevel=info

license

See the license file for license rights and limitations (MIT).

development and testing

To enable the debug mode of the Web service, set the DEBUG_MODE environment variable to 1. This will also enable the logging to the console.

The tests directory contains all unit and functional test-cases for the Web service. Use the following command to run all test cases bundled with this application (assuming you already created a virtualenv and installed the dependencies from the requirements.txt and requirements_text.txt):

(venv) $ python3 -m unittest tests.run_tests_all

Prior testing, you need to install and start the redis-server. Furthermore, you need to start a celery worker thread using the following commands:

export APP_SETTINGS=config.TestConfig
celery worker -A app.celery --loglevel=debug --autoreload