NIPAP is an open source and powerful IP address management system built to efficiently handle large amounts of IP addresses in small to large organizations. NIPAP comes with a sleek and intuitive web based management dashboard for Network engineers and SysAdmins to use. The web interface also features a powerful Google-style search, but a CLI client is also provided for terminal centric users. This short tutorial will show you how to install Neat IP Address Planner(NIPAP) on Ubuntu/Debian.
Features of Neat IP Address Planner
Some of the cool features of Neat IP Address Planner include:
- Very fast and scalable to hundreds of thousands of prefixes
- A stylish and intuitive web interface
- Native support for IPv6 (full feature parity with IPv4)
- CLI for the hardcore user
- Native VRF support, allowing overlapping prefixes in different VRFs
- Support for documenting individual hosts
- Very powerful search function (featuring regexp)
- Statistics over used and free addresses
- Integrated audit log
- IP address request system for automatically assigning suitable prefixes
- XML-RPC middleware, allowing easy integration with other applications or writing
- Flexible authentication using SQLite and/or LDAP
Client libraries for Python, Java and Oracle are available for those that want to integrate with other systems programmatically.
Install Neat IP Address Planner on Ubuntu/Debian
The NIPAP pre-built packages are officially provided for Debian and its derivatives. Here are the how to steps you need to follow.
Step 1: Add NIPAP repo
Start by adding the NIPAP repository to your Ubuntu/Debian package sources:
sudo apt update
sudo apt -y install gnupg2
echo "deb http://spritelink.github.io/NIPAP/repos/apt stable main extra" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nipap.listAdd the NIPAP public key for proper authentication of the packages provided:
## Debian 11 / Ubuntu 22.04 ##
curl -fsSL https://spritelink.github.io/NIPAP/nipap.gpg.key |sudo gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/nipap.gpg
## Older versions ##
wget -O - https://spritelink.github.io/NIPAP/nipap.gpg.key | sudo apt-key add -
Once the repository is added, update your package lists.
sudo apt updateStep 2: Install PostgreSQL and ip4r extension
Let’s now install the PostgreSQL, the contrib package and the ip4r extension:
Ubuntu 22.04:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql-contrib postgresql-14-ip4rUbuntu 20.04:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql-contrib postgresql-12-ip4rUbuntu 18.04:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql-contrib postgresql-10-ip4rDebian 11:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql-contrib postgresql-13-ip4rDebian 10:
sudo apt update
sudo apt install postgresql-contrib postgresql-11-ip4rStep 3: Install Neat IP Address Planner (NIPAP) packages on Ubuntu / Debian
The NIPAP packages installable are:
- nipapd – Neat IP Address Planner XML-RPC daemon
- nipap-common – A library with common stuff needed by all the other components
- nipap-cli – A CLI client for NIPAP
- nipap-www – A web frontend for NIPAP
- python-pynipap – Python module for accessing NIPAP
- python3-pynipap – Python 3 module for accessing NIPAP
Install the standard packages with the command:
sudo apt install nipapd nipap-cli nipap-www python-pynipapSelect to:
- Database server is localhost
- Automatically set up the database for nipapd
- Automatically start the services
Also agree to create a user for accessing the web interface.
Automatically create user for web interface? [yes/no] yesStep 4: Configure NIPAP Web UI
The web interface needs its own user account to authenticate towards the backend and it should be a trusted account. Create it with the following:
user="nipap-www"
password="StrongPassw3rd"
sudo nipap-passwd add --username $user --password $password --name "My User Account"
Command output is like this:
Added user nipap-www to database /etc/nipap/local_auth.dbConfigure
the web UI to use this account by configuring the xmlrpc_uri variable:
$ sudo vim /etc/nipap/nipap.conf
xmlrpc_uri = http://nipap-www@local:StrongPassw3rd@127.0.0.1:1337The configuration syntax is:
xmlrpc_uri = http://{{NIPAPD_USERNAME}}@local:{{NIPAPD_PASSWORD}}@{{NIPAPD_HOST}}:{{NIPAPD_PORT}}Restart nipapd service.
sudo systemctl restart nipapd.serviceOther user accounts can be added using same method:
nipap-passwd add --username myuser --password mypassword --name "my user"Serving the web UI with Apache httpd with mod_wsgi
Begin by installing Apache httpd with mod_wsgi:
sudo apt install apache2 libapache2-mod-wsgiThen, add a new virtual host:
sudo vim /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/nipap.confModify / paste below data:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName nipap.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/cache/nipap-www/
ServerAdmin [email protected]
WSGIScriptAlias / /etc/nipap/www/nipap-www.wsgi
<Directory /etc/nipap/www/>
Require all granted
</Directory>
<Directory /var/cache/nipap-www/>
Require all granted
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/nipap_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/nipap_access.log combinedEnable wsgi mod in Apache
sudo a2enmod wsgiValidate your Apache configurations:
$ sudo apachectl configtest
Syntax OKThe web server needs to be able to write to its cache, alter the permissions :
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/cache/nipap-www
sudo chmod -R u=rwX /var/cache/nipap-wwwNow, restart Apache httpd server:
sudo systemctl restart apache2The NIPAP web UI should be up and running and accessible on configured domain nipap.example.com.
Login with the credentials provided earlier.
Network prefixes can be added from CLI or web dashboard.
Configuring CLI
Add CLI user:
sudo nipap-passwd add --username nipap-cli --password StrongPassword --name "My CLI user"Then create your .nipaprc with username and password created above.
$ vim ~/.nipaprc
[global]
hostname = localhost
port = 1337
username = *nipap-cli*
password = *StrongPassword*
default_vrf_rt = none
default_list_vrf_rt = allSet file permissions:
chmod 0600 ~/.nipaprcTry adding test prefix to confirm it works.
$ sudo nipap address add prefix 192.168.20.0/24 type assignment description "Test prefix"
Network 192.168.20.0/24 added to VRF 'default' [RT: -]: Test prefixConfirm on UI Dashboard.
Check the NIPAP Documentation page for more details.
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