Question about terminal

RouterOS General
1

Hello everyone @ mikrotik forums
i would like to ask a question about ur terminal system

is there any possibility or near future implementation
in order to allow us to use bash shell like a PC with linux terminal ?

for example commands like cd,mv,del,rsync,mkdir,touch,tftp,telnet,ssh,chmod,nano,systemd,init,cp,rmdir,rm,ls
is there any change to see them in order to manipulate better the enviroment of the router or switch ?

thanks for ur time xD

2

Nope. And unlikely. RouterOS value, IMO, is that is a relatively fixed schema and consistent interface around Linux networking… so that it is NOT a hodgepodge of different Linux tools and files with variant schemes/file formats/etc.

There’s a learning curve to RouterOS config/scripting, but the idea once you understand the scheme… all the protocol/service configuration follows the same scheme which makes it easier long-term.

Overall, RouterOS does not use “files”, other than store/retrieve them in a few places for L5+ features or custom scripting. While RouterOS uses the Linux kernel, its userland does not use GNU/BSD/etc for “userland”. Most Linux things to have RouterOS command equalivalnts. So /file/print is their version of “ls”. There is a :grep, if that help. As a result, a shell would not help with configuration, there are no “config files”.

They do offer container, so an easy solution is use the with alpine if you need Linux tools. And you mount the RouterOS file system to container to do more typical Linux things.

3

thanks for ur answer

i find it http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/running-linux-server-on-ros7-4-using-docker-containers/158843/1

4

You can largely follow the direction here to bring up a container:
https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/spaces/ROS/pages/84901929/Container

You should be able to use “alpine:latest” as the tag (or search in forum for most complete instructions for alpine or ubuntu).

And in /container/mount, you can just create a mount to “/” which be the file system. Again, this is the user’s view of the file system. You’re still NOT going to see RouterOS “real” root file system, which is largely just processes and database with config.

5

Thanks mine is an old mipsbe not compatible as i see

6

Yeah, if you’re going to use this as a router, it’s not going to help. There is no way out of either using the native app (WinBox), web interface (WebFig), or one of the mobile apps.

The CLI from serial, terminal in any GUI, or ssh/telnet is all the same. This page describes the basic command structure:
https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/spaces/ROS/pages/328134/Command+Line+Interface

The CLI is same as “scripting”, so anything from here also works in CLI:
https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/spaces/ROS/pages/47579229/Scripting

And completion and syntax checking works everywhere in the CLI. F1 will sometime show a help screen with more details.

And some stuff like work like /bin/sh or has some equivalent command… Stuff like variables are still $ and you can use them in string is pretty similar:

:global world "world"
:put "Hello $world"

vs. /bin/sh

world="world"
echo "Hello $world"

Anyway, it wierd at first, but actually many time like than pipingstuff like jq, awk, sed, etc. to edit networking config files in Linux’s /etc etc.

7

thanks for ur explanations