Initialisation

Before running Routinator for the first time, you must prepare the working environment. You do this using the init subcommand. This will create the directory for the Trust Anchor Locator (TAL) files and copy the desired TALs into it, and create the directory for the local RPKI cache.

If you have installed Routinator using a package from our software package repository, the application is configured to run as a system service with the user routinator. We have included an initialisation script named routinator-init and pre-installed a configuration file located in /etc/routinator/routinator.conf to make the setup process easy for you. The configuration is meant to prepare Routinator for production environments, explicitly setting the TAL and RPKI cache directories and enabling the HTTP and RTR servers on localhost.

The routinator-init script invokes the init subcommand as the user routinator and takes configuration file into consideration. All of the options for the init subcommand can be appended to the routinator-init script, which are described below. If you have built Routinator using Cargo you also have to perform the initialisation steps, but in this case you invoke the init subcommand directly.

Important

There is a subtle difference in the initialisation commands depending on how you installed Routinator.

When installed using a package, you would for example enter:

routinator-init --list-tals

When built using Cargo, you would use:

routinator init --list-tals

Trust Anchor Locators

Trust Anchor Locators (TALs) provide hints for the trust anchor certificates to be used both to discover and validate all RPKI content. There are five TALs, one for each Regional Internet Registry (RIR). For production environments these are the only five you will ever need to fetch and validate all available RPKI data.

Some RIRs and third parties also provide separate TALs for testing purposes, allowing operators to gain experience with using RPKI in a safe environment. Both the production and testbed TALs are bundled with Routinator and can be installed with the init subcommand.

To get an overview of all available TALs use the --list-tals option:

routinator init --list-tals

This displays the following overview:

.---- --rir-tals
|  .- --rir-test-tals
V  V

X      afrinic             AFRINIC production TAL
X      apnic               APNIC production TAL
X      arin                ARIN production TAL
X      lacnic              LACNIC production TAL
X      ripe                RIPE production TAL
   X   apnic-testbed       APNIC RPKI Testbed
   X   arin-ote            ARIN Operational Test and Evaluation Environment
   X   ripe-pilot          RIPE NCC RPKI Test Environment
       nlnetlabs-testbed   NLnet Labs RPKI Testbed

Preparing for Production Environments

Warning

Using the TAL from ARIN requires you to read and accept their Relying Party Agreement before you can use it. Running the init subcommand will provide you with instructions.

By default, the repository and TAL directory will be created under $HOME/.rpki-cache. You can change their location using the --repository-dir and --tal-dir options, or by using a configuration file.

In the most common scenario, you will want to install the TALs of the five RIRs. To do this, run the following command:

routinator init --rir-tals

This will return the following message:

Before we can install the ARIN TAL, you must have read
and agree to the ARIN Relying Party Agreement (RPA).
It is available at

https://www.arin.net/resources/manage/rpki/rpa.pdf

If you agree to the RPA, please run the command
again with the --accept-arin-rpa option.

Running the init subcommand with the --accept-arin-rpa option added will create the repository and TAL directory and copy the five Trust Anchor Locator files into it:

routinator init --rir-tals --accept-arin-rpa

If you built Routinator using Cargo and set up a configuration file before initialisation, make sure to refer to it using the --config option, e.g.:

routinator --config /home/routinator/routinator.conf init --rir-tals --accept-arin-rpa

If you decide you cannot agree to the ARIN RPA terms, you can use the --skip-tal option to exclude the TAL. If, at a later point, you wish to include the ARIN TAL you can add it to your current installation using the --force option, to force the installation of all TALs.

Preparing for Test Environments

To install all of the TALs for the various test environments, you can use the --rir-test-tals option. However, in most cases you will want to install a specific one, using the --tal option.

For example, to add the TAL for the ARIN Operational Test and Evaluation Environment to an already initialised Routinator, enter:

routinator init --force --tal arin-ote

New in version 0.9.0: --list-tals, --rir-tals, --rir-test-tals, --tal and --skip-tal

Deprecated since version 0.9.0: --decline-arin-rpa, use --skip-tal instead

Verifying Initialisation

You should verify if Routinator has been initialised correctly and your firewall allows the required outbound connections on ports 443 and 873. From a cold start, it will take ten to fifteen minutes to do the first validation run that builds up the validated cache. Subsequent runs will be much faster, because only the changes between the repositories and the validated cache need to be processed.

If you have installed Routinator from a package and run it as a service, you can check the status using:

sudo systemctl status routinator

And check the logs using:

sudo journalctl --unit=routinator

Important

Because it is expected that the state of the entire RPKI is not perfect as all times, you may see several warnings about objects that are either stale or failed cryptographic verification, or repositories that are temporarily unavailable.

If you have built Routinator using Cargo it is recommended to perform an initial test run. You can do this by having Routinator print a validated ROA payload (VRP) list with the vrps subcommand, and using -v twice to increase the log level to debug:

routinator -vv vrps

Now, you can see how Routinator connects to the RPKI trust anchors, downloads the the contents of the repositories to your machine, verifies it and produces a list of VRPs in the default CSV format to standard output.

RRDP https://rrdp.ripe.net/notification.xml: Tree has 0 entries.
RRDP https://rrdp.ripe.net/notification.xml: updating from snapshot.
Found valid trust anchor https://rpki.afrinic.net/repository/AfriNIC.cer. Processing.
Found valid trust anchor https://rpki.apnic.net/repository/apnic-rpki-root-iana-origin.cer. Processing.
RRDP https://rrdp.afrinic.net/notification.xml: Tree has 0 entries.
RRDP https://rrdp.afrinic.net/notification.xml: updating from snapshot.
RRDP https://rrdp.apnic.net/notification.xml: Tree has 0 entries.
RRDP https://rrdp.apnic.net/notification.xml: updating from snapshot.
RRDP https://rrdp.afrinic.net/notification.xml: snapshot update completed.
Found valid trust anchor https://rrdp.arin.net/arin-rpki-ta.cer. Processing.
RRDP https://rrdp.arin.net/notification.xml: Tree has 0 entries.
RRDP https://rrdp.arin.net/notification.xml: updating from snapshot.
rsync://repository.lacnic.net/rpki/: successfully completed.
Found valid trust anchor https://rrdp.lacnic.net/ta/rta-lacnic-rpki.cer. Processing.
RRDP https://rrdp.lacnic.net/rrdp/notification.xml: Tree has 0 entries.
RRDP https://rrdp.lacnic.net/rrdp/notification.xml: updating from snapshot.
RRDP https://rrdp.arin.net/notification.xml: snapshot update completed.
RRDP https://rrdp.sub.apnic.net/notification.xml: Tree has 0 entries.
RRDP https://rrdp.sub.apnic.net/notification.xml: updating from snapshot.
RRDP https://rrdp.ripe.net/notification.xml: snapshot update completed.
RRDP https://rrdp.sub.apnic.net/notification.xml: snapshot update completed.
RRDP https://rpki-repo.registro.br/rrdp/notification.xml: Tree has 0 entries.
RRDP https://rpki-repo.registro.br/rrdp/notification.xml: updating from snapshot.
RRDP https://rrdp.twnic.tw/rrdp/notify.xml: Tree has 0 entries.
RRDP https://rrdp.twnic.tw/rrdp/notify.xml: updating from snapshot.
...
ASN,IP Prefix,Max Length,Trust Anchor
AS137884,103.116.116.0/23,23,apnic
AS9003,91.151.112.0/20,20,ripe
AS38553,120.72.19.0/24,24,apnic
AS58045,37.209.242.0/24,24,ripe
AS9583,202.177.175.0/24,24,apnic
AS50629,2a0f:ba80::/29,29,ripe
AS398085,2602:801:a008::/48,48,arin
AS21050,83.96.22.0/24,24,ripe
AS55577,183.82.223.0/24,24,apnic
AS44444,157.167.73.0/24,24,ripe
AS197695,194.67.97.0/24,24,ripe
...