Templates reference a config file with the GNS3_IOL_STARTUP_CONFIG
environment knob; the controller materializes the file content into
startup_config_content on node creation (sent once, knob consumed —
the same pattern as the IOU startup_config mapping). The compute builds
the content into the node's nvram_<app id> at the next start using the
IOU nvram_import utility (IOL and IOU share the nvram container format,
verified against iol-xe 17.18.02): valid config at boot, no setup
dialog, %h hostname substitution, hostname rewrite on rename.
Semantics verified against the runner: IOL boots from NVRAM whenever it
holds a config, so a plain stop/start never re-applies the startup
config and 'write memory' survives restarts; an explicit content edit
(PUT) is re-applied on the next start and wins over the saved config,
like IOU.
Web clients serialize empty form fields as "" while unset values are
stored as None on the node. The bare != diff in the update handler then
sees a phantom change on every full PUT and recreates the container for
nothing -- even when the user only changed a controller-only field such
as netmiko_device_type.
Normalize at the schema boundary ("" -> None for start_command,
environment and extra_hosts; "" -> "/" for console_http_path), make
the setters apply the same canonicalization, and create nodes through
the setters instead of bypassing them in __init__ so both paths store
identical values.
Project open used to create each link by issuing two NIO POSTs from the
controller to the compute — ~5000 HTTP round-trips for a 2500-link
topology, all funnelling through the single shared controller/compute
event loop and capping throughput near 12 links/s.
Replace it with a bulk path:
- UDPLink split into _prepare() (local: ports, peer addrs, link_data)
and _commit_nios() (dispatch). create() = prepare + commit (interactive).
- Link.add_node gains batch=True: attach both nodes without triggering
per-link NIO HTTP.
- compute: new POST /projects/{id}/nios/batch endpoint with a unified
_add_nio_binding dispatch across node types (docker/qemu/iou/vpcs/
builtin differ in signature).
- project.open: prepare all links locally, group NIO entries by compute,
send each compute a single /nios/batch, then finalise (wire node/port
refs, mark created, notify, apply marker defs) in parallel.
Cuts controller->compute HTTP from O(links) to O(computes). Test added
for the batch endpoint.
