Re: [netmod] Schema mount and Network Instance model

[Martin Bjorklund <[e-mail]>]

Hi,

Mahesh Jethanandani <[e-mail]> wrote:
> The network-instances YANG model [RFC8529] gives an example in
> Appendix A.1 <https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc8529#appendix-A.1> of how
> to use schema mount to mount the routing protocol. An example modeled
> along those lines for the BGP YANG model, and enclosed herewith fails
> validation using yanglint with the following error. What am I doing
> wrong?
> 
> Validating yang/example-bgp-configuration-a.1.3.xml
> err : Unknown element
> "routing". (/ietf-network-instance:network-instances/network-instance[name='vrf-red']/vrf-root)
> failed (error code: 0)
> 
> With confdc it fails as follows:
> 
> Loading Data for example a.1.3
> confd_load: 666: maapi_load_config(sock, tid, flags, abspath(argv[0]))
> failed: external error (19): Error on line 9: unknown element: routing
> in
> /ni:network-instances/ni:network-instance[ni:name='vrf-red']/ni:vrf-root/rt:routing
> 
> If what I have is not an error, it raises two questions. Is schema
> mount supported? Supported from a validation perspective. I can
> imagine that not everyone (or anyone) may have actually implemented
> schema mount.

Schema mount is (i) a generic mechanism for composing models at
specific mount points and (ii) a way for a server to report to clients
how this composition is done in the specific server (this may vary
dynamically over time).

The network-instance model is generic; it just defines a mount point
in the data model.  A specific server might be implemented to mount
the "ietf-routing" model under the mount point, and in that case it
will be able to validate the instance document you provided.

However, a generic YANG validator tool does not know (*) which models
are supposed to be mounted under any given mount point, and thus it
will probably raise an error (as you saw).

(*) unless you also pass it additional information about this in some
way (this could e.g. in the form of an instance document that contains
the /schema-mounts subtree and the ietf-yang-library contents for the
mount point)

As for implmentation support, we have implemented YANG schema mount in
NSO.

> And the second and more important question is how are routing
> protocols supposed to support VRF if the two models, network instance
> and routing protocol, do not work together? What needs to change to
> get them to work?

I think they do work together!


/martin