Awesome

Introduction

kathara-lab-starter is a simple program that requires no extra python dependencies on debian. It allows you to declaratively make a starting configuration for your kathara lab using simple and intuitive json files that are meant to be fast to type.

This tool is meant for speed and simplicity, so it didn't make sense to include super complex and router-specific configuration options in the json files, since you could just type those in the appropriate configuration files. You should just use this to get started quickly, the json file structure is meant to avoid repetitions so there's less room for typing errors and it's easier to check.

After generating the starting lab, you should go in the lab and make the final adjustments yourself.

How to use

First, clone this repo and cd into it.

git clone https://github.com/BuonHobo/kathara-lab-starter
cd kathara-lab-starter

Then, you can copy the config directory, which is where you will write your json files.

cp -r config my-config

Now you can delete the json files related to protocols that you don't need. Then you can start editing the ones you need by inserting your own data. The files are intuitive, but I would like to write a documentation for them if anyone's interested.

Finally, generate your lab

python main.py my-config my-lab

This is obviously not ideal, but it works for now...

The default config reproduces this lab without needing any tweaks (although the routing is very "dumb" by default)

How to add a protocol

This tool is meant to be easy to extend. For now, it's easy to add a new protocol by implementing these interfaces.

DaemonParser is the class that reads information from the json file and uses it to build a Daemon with all of the domain information. A Deamon can add itself to a router using the Daemon.add_router(Router: router) method. DaemonConfigurer is the class that will configure each router one at a time, using data about the topology and the domain data stored in Daemon.

After implementing everything, you just need to make sure that the DaemonParser.merge() method is called within the configure_topology() method in the wizard.py. You could add a couple of lines that look like this:

if config.joinpath("dns.json").exists():
    DNSParser(config.joinpath("dns.json")).merge(topology)

TOPOLOGY

It basically does what you expect: sets up the lab.conf and adds the ip address on each router interface. You can also set the default gateway for each client. All you have to do is specify the LANs and associate the names. Then for each router you can set the last byte of its address and the LAN that it sees on each interface.

DNS

Under "root" you can describe the dns hierarchy, the "leaf zones" are in arrays because they don't have children. Under "servers" you can specify in each line the name zone and the server for that zone. Under "names" you can specify which zone a router name belongs to. Under "resolvers" you can specify a dns solver and the clients that use it.

OSPF

Under Areas you can specify which areas are stubs or not and associate the appropriate LANs, make sure to give them all different names. Then you can specify which routers speak OSPF (on all interfaces by default) and the costs for each router on each interface (ALL on different lines).

to be continued...