[laugh] Vadim Yakovenko reacted to your message:
________________________________
From: Kea-users <[email protected]> on behalf of Ben Scott
<[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, December 10, 2025 4:56:20 AM
To: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Kea-users] Kea 3.0.1 (Debian) – kea-shell hangs when executing
lease4 commands through Control Agent
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On 12/9/25 03:31, Oliver wrote:
> echo '{ "command": "list-commands" }' | \ kea-shell --host 127.0.0.1 --
> port 8000 \ --auth-user xxx \ --auth-password-file /etc/kea/kea-api-
> password \ --service dhcp4
The above is not correct usage. The API command has to be provided
on the command line. The API arguments are provided on standard input.
So one should not give "command" in standard input, but rather, whatever
one would put inside the "arguments" map (object). If no arguments are
needed, the input should be empty/null.
The documentation could be clearer in this regard. In particular,
the man page should make this explicit. The ARM does a better job but
could still stand some improvement. I will try to get some changes
submitted for that soon.
https://kea.readthedocs.io/en/latest/arm/shell.html
> This also hangs with no output:
> kea-shell --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000 \ --service dhcp4 \ list-commands
It is not "hung" (in the sense of improperly functioning). It is
blocked on standard input. You are not providing anything as input, so
it sits there waiting for you to do so.
kea-shell is a very simple program. It has no knowledge of the Kea
API; it simply passes what you give it on to Kea. As such, it still
expects an API argument payload -- it does not "know" if an API command
needs arguments or not.
The simplest possible invocation of kea-shell looks like:
kea-shell < /dev/null
The defaults are:
host = localhost
port = 8000
API command = list-commands
service = none
authentication = none
Thus, the above command is equivalent to:
kea-shell --host 127.0.0.1 --port 8000 list-commands < /dev/null
Either of the above two command lines will invoke "list-commands"
against whatever is listening on port 8000. If that is kea-ctrl-agent
(the only supported scenario before 3.0), you get the commands available
on the Kea Control Agent. On Kea 3.0, you get the commands for whatever
daemon you are talking to (kea-ctrl-agent or kea-dhcp4 or whatever).
For your case, you probably want something like:
kea-shell --service dhcp4 \
--auth-user xxx \
--auth-password-file /etc/kea/kea-api-password \
< /dev/null
For API commands which do take input, it might look like this:
echo ' "ip-address": "192.0.2.202" ' |\
kea-shell --service dhcp4 lease4-del
Note how the input is just the arguments to the API (without the API
command name). Note also that the API command name is specified as an
argument to "kea-shell" itself.
> Is it expected behavior that |kea-shell| ignores HTTP/authentication
> parameters in the ISC Debian packages?
No. In my experience, it does not ignore these parameters.
> Should |kea-shell| be able to communicate with an authenticated
> Control Agent, or is this a known limitation?
Yes, kea-shell supports both HTTP basic authentication as well as TLS
client certificates.
> Is |kea-shell| still supposed to use the UNIX control socket even
> when HTTP parameters are explicitly provided?
No. kea-shell never uses the control sockets. It either talks to
kea-ctrl-agent, or in 3.0 and later, it can talk to the services
directly (if the services are configured with HTTP listeners).
Hope this helps,
-- Ben
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