Nokia Networking/SR Linux Notes

Software Version

The annual release in October is what Nokia call the "Long Term Release" and gets security updates and bug fixes for longer than the others. We should therefore try to always use .10. releases, and probably from the previous year or before if possible.

Bash Shell / SR-Linux CLI

If you log on to a new device with the 'linuxadmin' user you will end up in a bash shell on the device. You can access the CLI from this environment by executing:

   /opt/srlinux/bin/sr_cli

If you SSH to the device normally you can get a bash shell on it by simply typing 'bash', and from there a root shell:

   bash
   sudo -s

Limitations

IPv6 Router Advertisements are not sent from Anycast MAC in EVPN Anycast - T420706
- No workaround
- Target fix: resolved in 26.7.1, July 2026
ARP resolution bug - T409178
- Worked around by setting disabled ports speed to the same value as active ports in the same block
- Target fix: resolved in 25.7.1
DHCP responses to relayed packets are not processed or sent to the host phab:T409286
- Worked around by resetting vxlan tunnels so their ID does not conflict with mgmt interface ID
  - Will re-occur after a reboot so we need to do these resets after mainteneances
- Target fix: resolved in 26.3.2 & 25.10.3, released on May 13 2026
DHCP Sub-Option 5 missing feature (RFC3527 support)
- Work-around is to assign a second, unique IP on the irb0 sub-interface on every participating switch
- For now a non-issue as switches are not the IP gateway / doing DHCP due to IPv6 RA issue
- Target fix: resolved in 26.3.1 April 2026
  - `set / interface irb0 subinterface <id> ipv4 dhcp-relay option [ link-selection ]`
DHCP Option 82 only supplies irb sub-interface ID, not port connecting host
- Worked around by using the hosts UUIDs for provisioning
- Target fix: resolved in 26.3.2 May 2026
  - `set / interface irb0 subinterface <id> ipv4 dhcp-relay circuit-id-l2-interface`
MGMT0 errors counters increasing - T412733
- Worked around by downtiming the matching alerting
- Target fix: resolved in 26.7.1, July 2026
gRPC threads exhaustion - T429242
- Workaround: regular gRPC server reload
- Target fix: resolved in 24.10.5

Feature Requests

Announce BGP routes with MED matching OSPF cost to next-hop (EVPN)
- Chasing through account team to confirm it is on road-map (May 2026)
- Without this CRs see all routes announced as "equal", and will send eqiad row C/D traffic to row A/B spines
- Work-around: use some more elaborate BGP policy to announce the remote-pod routes with higher med or similar.