Pyroute2 is a pure Python netlink and Linux network configuration library. It requires only Python stdlib, no 3rd party libraries. Later it can change, but the deps tree will remain as simple, as it is possible.

The library provides several modules:

• Netlink protocol implementations (RTNetlink, TaskStats, etc)
  • rtnl, network settings — addresses, routes, traffic controls
  • nl80211 — wireless functions API (work in progress)
  • nfnetlink — netfilter API: ipset (work in progress), …
  • ipq — simplest userspace packet filtering, iptables QUEUE target
  • taskstats — extended process statistics
• Simple netlink socket object, that can be used in poll/select
• Network configuration module IPRoute provides API that in some way resembles ip/tc functionality
• IPDB is an async transactional database of Linux network settings

More samples you can read in the project documentation.

The lowest possible layer, simple socket interface. This socket supports normal socket API and can be used in poll/select::

from pyroute2 import IPRSocket

# create the socket
ip = IPRSocket()

# bind
ip.bind()

# get and parse a broadcast message
ip.get()

# close
ip.close()

Low-level IPRoute utility -- Linux network configuration. IPRoute usually doesn't rely on external utilities, but in some cases, when the kernel doesn't provide the functionality via netlink (like on RHEL6.5), it transparently uses also brctl and sysfs to setup bridges and bonding interfaces::

from pyroute2 import IPRoute

# get access to the netlink socket
ip = IPRoute()

# print interfaces
print(ip.get_links())

# release Netlink socket
ip.close()

High-level transactional interface, IPDB, a network settings DB::

from pyroute2 import IPDB
# local network settings
ip = IPDB()
# create bridge and add ports and addresses
# transaction will be started with `with` statement
# and will be committed at the end of the block
try:
    with ip.create(kind='bridge', ifname='rhev') as i:
        i.add_port(ip.interfaces.em1)
        i.add_port(ip.interfaces.em2)
        i.add_ip('10.0.0.2/24')
except Exception as e:
    print(e)
finally:
    ip.release()

The project contains several modules for different types of netlink messages, not only RTNL.

Network namespace manipulation::

from pyroute2 import netns
# create netns
netns.create('test')
# list
print(netns.listnetns())
# remove netns
netns.remove('test')

Create veth interfaces pair and move to netns::

from pyroute2 import IPDB

ip = IPDB()
# create interface pair
ip.create(ifname='v0p0', kind='veth', peer='v0p1').commit()
# move peer to netns
with ip.interfaces.v0p1 as veth:
    veth.net_ns_fd = 'test'
# don't forget to release before exit
ip.release()

List interfaces in some netns::

from pyroute2 import NetNS
from pprint import pprint

ns = NetNS('test')
pprint(ns.get_links())
ns.close()

More details and samples see in the documentation.

make install or pip install pyroute2

Python >= 2.6

The pyroute2 testing framework requires flake8, coverage, nosetests.

• home: https://github.com/svinota/pyroute2
• bugs: https://github.com/svinota/pyroute2/issues
• pypi: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/pyroute2
• docs: http://docs.pyroute2.org/
• list: https://groups.google.com/d/forum/pyroute2-dev