Starting with VyOS 1.2 (crux) our documentation is hosted on ReadTheDocs at https://docs.vyos.io

Our old wiki with documentation from the VyOS 1.1.x and early 1.2.0 era can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine

Build

Versions

Our version follows the very same branching scheme as the VyOS source modules itself. We maintain one documentation branch per VyOS release. The default branch that contains the most recent VyOS documentation is called current and matches the latest VyOS release which is 1.4 at the time.

All new documentation enhancements go to the current branch. If those changes are beneficial for previous VyOS documentation versions they will be cherry-picked to the appropriate branch(es).

Post-1.2.0 branches are named after constellations sorted by area from smallest to largest. There are 88 of them, here's the complete list.

1.2.x: crux (Southern Cross)
1.3.x: equuleus (Little Horse)
1.4.x: sagitta (Arrow)
...

Sphinx

Debian requires some extra steps for installing sphinx, sphinx-autobuild, sphinx-notfound-page, sphinx-panels, sphinx-rtd-theme, lxml, and myst-parser packages:

First ensure that Python 2 & Python 3 are installed and Python 3 is the default:

python --version

Alternatively, to make Python the default, revise the following line to point at the relevant 3.x version of the binary on your system:

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3 0

Then install the sphinx group of packages:

sudo apt-get install python3-sphinx

Although almost everything uses Python 3, in order to install this specific package, make sure that pip points at the Python 2 version of the package manager:

python --version

Then run:

sudo pip install sphinx-autobuild sphinx-notfound-page sphinx-panels sphinx-rtd-theme lxml myst-parser

Do the following to build the HTML and start a web server:

Run make livehtml inside the docs folder

Then, to view the live output:

Browse to http://localhost:8000 Note: The changes you save to the sources are represented in the live HTML output automatically (and almost instantly) without the need to rebuild or refresh manually.

Docker

Using our Dockerfile you can create your own Docker container that is used to build a VyOS documentation.

Setup

You can either build the container on your own or directly fetch it prebuilt from Dockerhub. If you want to build it for yourself, use the following command.

$ docker build -t vyos/vyos-documentation docker

Building documentation

If the vyos/vyos-documentation container could not be found locally it will be automatically fetched from Dockerhub.

$ docker run --rm -it -v "$(pwd)":/vyos -w /vyos/docs \
  -e GOSU_UID=$(id -u) -e GOSU_GID=$(id -g) vyos/vyos-documentation make html

# sphinx autobuild
$ docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 -v "$(pwd)":/vyos -w /vyos/docs -e \
  GOSU_UID=$(id -u) -e GOSU_GID=$(id -g) vyos/vyos-documentation make livehtml

Test the docs

To test all files, run:

$ docker run --rm -it -v "$(pwd)":/vyos -w /vyos/docs \
  -e GOSU_UID=$(id -u) -e GOSU_GID=$(id -g) vyos/vyos-documentation vale .

to test a specific file (e.g. quick-start.rst)

$ docker run --rm -it -v "$(pwd)":/vyos -w /vyos/docs -e GOSU_UID=$(id -u) \
  -e GOSU_GID=$(id -g) vyos/vyos-documentation vale quick-start.rst