B.2 The gated Configuration Language

The gated configuration language is a highly structured language similar to C in appearance. Comments either begin with a #, or they begin with /* and end with */. gated configuration statements end with a semicolon, and groups of associated statements are enclosed in curly braces. The language structure is familiar to most UNIX system administrators, and the structure makes it easy to see what parts of the configuration are associated with each other. This is important when multiple protocols are configured in the same file.

The configuration language is composed of nine types of statements. Two statement types, directive statements and trace statements, can occur anywhere in the gated.conf file and do not directly relate to the configuration of any protocol. These statements provide instructions to the parser and control tracing from within the configuration file. The other seven statement types are options statements, interface statements, definition statements, protocol statements, static statements, control statements, and aggregate statements. These statements must appear in the configuration file in the correct order, starting with options statements and ending with aggregate statements. Entering a statement out of order causes an error when parsing the file.

The remainder of this appendix provides a description of all commands in the gated configuration language, organized by statement type.