UPDATE: this package no longer uses original libcontainer repo to source netlink package. It now uses runc packages where the original libcontainer repo has been moved!!!

tenus is a Golang package which allows you to configure and manage Linux network devices programmatically. It communicates with Linux Kernel via netlink to facilitate creation and configuration of network devices on the Linux host. The package also allows for more advanced network setups with Linux containers including Docker.

tenus uses runc's implementation of netlink protocol. The package only works with newer Linux Kernels (3.10+) which are shipping reasonably new netlink protocol implementation, so if you are running older kernel this package won't be of much use to you I'm afraid. I have developed this package on Ubuntu Trusty Tahr which ships with 3.13+ and verified its functionality on Precise Pangolin with upgraded kernel to version 3.10. I could worked around the netlink issues by using ioctl syscalls, but I decided to prefer "pure netlink" implementation, so suck it old Kernels.

At the moment only functional tests are available, but the interface design should hopefully allow for easy (ish) unit testing in the future. I do appreciate that the package's test coverage is not great at the moment, but the core functionality should be covered. I would massively welcome PRs.

There is a Vagrantfile available in the repo so using vagrant is the easiest way to get started:

milosgajdos@bimbonet ~ $ git clone https://github.com/milosgajdos83/tenus.git
milosgajdos@bimbonet ~ $ vagrant up

Note using the provided Vagrantfile will take quite a long time to spin the VM as vagrant will setup Ubuntu Trusty VM with all the prerequisities:

• it will install golang and docker onto the VM
• it will export GOPATH and go get the tenus package onto the VM
• it will also "pull" Docker ubuntu image so that you can run the tests once the VM is set up

At the moment running the tests require Docker to be installed, but in the future I'd love to separate tests per interface so that you can run only chosen test sets.

Once the VM is running, cd into particular repo directory and you can run the tests:

milosgajdos@bimbonet ~ $ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/milosgajdos83/tenus
milosgajdos@bimbonet ~ $ sudo go test

If you don't want to use the provided Vagrantfile, you can simply run your own Linux VM (with 3.10+ kernel) and follow the regular golang development flow:

milosgajdos@bimbonet ~ $ go get github.com/milosgajdos83/tenus
milosgajdos@bimbonet ~ $ cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/milosgajdos83/tenus
milosgajdos@bimbonet ~ $ sudo go test

Once you've got the package and ran the tests (you don't need to run the tests!), you can start hacking. Below you can find simple code samples to get started with the package.

Below you can find a few code snippets which can help you get started writing your own programs.

The example below shows a simple program example which creates a new network bridge, a new dummy network link and adds it into the bridge.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"log"

	"github.com/milosgajdos83/tenus"
)

func main() {
	// Create a new network bridge
	br, err := tenus.NewBridgeWithName("mybridge")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	// Bring the bridge up
	if err = br.SetLinkUp(); err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}

	// Create a dummy link
	dl, err := tenus.NewLink("mydummylink")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	// Add the dummy link into bridge
	if err = br.AddSlaveIfc(dl.NetInterface()); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	// Bring the dummy link up
	if err = dl.SetLinkUp(); err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}
}

The example below shows how you can create a new network bride, configure its IP address, add a new veth pair and send one of the veth peers into Docker with a given name.

!! You must make sure that particular Docker is runnig if you want the code sample below to work properly !! So before you compile and run the program below you should create a particular docker with the below used name:

milosgajdos@bimbonet ~ $ docker run -i -t --rm --privileged -h vethdckr --name vethdckr ubuntu:14.04 /bin/bash

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"net"

	"github.com/milosgajdos83/tenus"
)

func main() {
	// CREATE BRIDGE AND BRING IT UP
	br, err := tenus.NewBridgeWithName("vethbridge")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	brIp, brIpNet, err := net.ParseCIDR("10.0.41.1/16")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	if err := br.SetLinkIp(brIp, brIpNet); err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}

	if err = br.SetLinkUp(); err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}

	// CREATE VETH PAIR
	veth, err := tenus.NewVethPairWithOptions("myveth01", tenus.VethOptions{PeerName: "myveth02"})
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	// ASSIGN IP ADDRESS TO THE HOST VETH INTERFACE
	vethHostIp, vethHostIpNet, err := net.ParseCIDR("10.0.41.2/16")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	if err := veth.SetLinkIp(vethHostIp, vethHostIpNet); err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}

	// ADD MYVETH01 INTERFACE TO THE MYBRIDGE BRIDGE
	myveth01, err := net.InterfaceByName("myveth01")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	if err = br.AddSlaveIfc(myveth01); err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}

	if err = veth.SetLinkUp(); err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}

	// PASS VETH PEER INTERFACE TO A RUNNING DOCKER BY PID
	pid, err := tenus.DockerPidByName("vethdckr", "/var/run/docker.sock")
	if err != nil {
		fmt.Println(err)
	}

	if err := veth.SetPeerLinkNsPid(pid); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	// ALLOCATE AND SET IP FOR THE NEW DOCKER INTERFACE
	vethGuestIp, vethGuestIpNet, err := net.ParseCIDR("10.0.41.5/16")
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	if err := veth.SetPeerLinkNetInNs(pid, vethGuestIp, vethGuestIpNet, nil); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
}

You can check out VLAN and Mac VLAN examples, too.

Repo contains few more code sample in examples folder so make sure to check them out if you're interested.

This is just a rough beginning of the project which I put together over couple of weeks in my free time. I'd like to integrate this into my own Docker fork and test the advanced netowrking functionality with the core of Docker as oppose to configuring network interfaces from a separate golang program, because advanced networking in Docker was the main motivation for writing this package.

More in depth package documentation is available via godoc