If your quagga bgpd daemon is up and running (check out our article for Minimal quagga bgpd configuration to run and remote configure it) and you wonder how to check if everything is OK and the bgp session is established, here is a quick command line tip what you can do:

STEP 1) Check if your bgp daemon is connected to a remote bgp server (neighbor)

root@srv ~ # vtysh -c "show bgp neighbors"
BGP neighbor is 10.10.10.10, remote AS 16238, local AS 52218, external link
  BGP version 4, remote router ID 10.10.10.131
  BGP state = Established, up for 2d23h57m
  Last read 00:00:03, hold time is 9, keepalive interval is 3 seconds
  Neighbor capabilities:
    4 Byte AS: advertised
    Route refresh: advertised and received(old & new)
    Address family IPv4 Unicast: advertised and received
    Graceful Restart Capabilty: advertised
  Message statistics:
    Inq depth is 0
    Outq depth is 0
                         Sent       Rcvd
    Opens:                  1          1
    Notifications:          0          0
    Updates:                1          2
    Keepalives:         86323      86049
    Route Refresh:          0          0
    Capability:             0          0
    Total:              86325      86052
  Minimum time between advertisement runs is 30 seconds

 For address family: IPv4 Unicast
  Community attribute sent to this neighbor(both)
  Outbound path policy configured
  Outgoing update prefix filter list is *anydns-pfx
  12 accepted prefixes

  Connections established 1; dropped 0
  Last reset never
Local host: 10.10.10.5, Local port: 40172
Foreign host: 10.10.10.10, Foreign port: 179
Nexthop: 10.10.10.5
Nexthop global: ::
Nexthop local: ::
BGP connection: non shared network
Read thread: on  Write thread: off

STEP 2) Check the IP routes

root@srv ~ # vtysh -c "show ip bgp"
BGP table version is 0, local router ID is 10.10.10.5
Status codes: s suppressed, d damped, h history, * valid, > best, = multipath,
              i internal, r RIB-failure, S Stale, R Removed
Origin codes: i - IGP, e - EGP, ? - incomplete

   Network          Next Hop            Metric LocPrf Weight Path
*> 0.0.0.0          10.10.10.10                         0 30627 i
*> 10.10.11.240/28
                    10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?
*> 10.10.11.234/31
                    10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?
*> 10.10.12.236/31
                    10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?
*> 10.10.13.242/32
                    10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?
*> 10.10.14.0/24  10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?
*> 10.10.15.0/24  10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?
*> 10.10.16.0/24  10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?
*> 11.11.11.0/24  0.0.0.0                  0         29873 i
*> 10.10.17.64/26 10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?
*> 10.10.18.240/29
                    10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?
*> 10.10.10.192/26
                    10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?
*> 10.10.10.192/26
                    10.10.10.10           0             0 30627 ?

Total number of prefixes 13

vtysh

vtysh – is the command line tool to manage Quagga BGP daemon locally.

Bonus Configuration

Here is our basic configuration in “/etc/quagga/bgpd.conf ”

hostname ns5.anycast.local1
password pppppppppp
log file /var/log/quagga/bgpd.log

router bgp 52218
bgp router-id 10.10.10.5
network 11.11.11.0/24
neighbor 10.10.10.10 remote-as 16238
neighbor 10.10.10.10 prefix-list anydns-pfx out
!
ip prefix-list anydns-pfx seq 5 permit 11.11.11.0/24
!
line vty

* All IPs are changed.