Migrating from BIRD 2 to BIRD 3

• Pretty much any BIRD 2.x configuration should be reusable with BIRD 3.1.x without changes
• Configuration changes, similar as those required between minor releases in the past, may still be required
• See also: https://gitlab.nic.cz/labs/bird/-/blob/stable-v3.1/doc/migration-bird3.md

Please pay attention to possible warnings or errors; it might look like this:

[0001] <WARN> /etc/bird.conf:179:1: Missing authentication option, assuming MD5

You also can run e.g. bird -c /etc/bird.conf -p manually. Here it's a warning, and while a configuration change might not be mandatory, it's still recommented:

For the above example warning, the configuration file /etc/bird.conf looks like this:

protocol bgp isp1 from bgp6 {
  neighbor 2001:db8::179 port 179 as 64496;
  authentication md5;  # New configuration option introduced with BIRD 3
  password "MD5_auth3nt!catiOn";
}

To avoid the warning, the newly introduced configuration option authentication md5; needs to be added as demonstrated in the example configuration above.

BIRD 3.1.1 (2025-05-13)

• Makefile: Fix accidentally added dry-run markers
• BGP: Fix route refresh behavior
• BGP: Fix reconfiguration of import behavior modifiers
• BGP: Fix crash on too long export
• Conf: Fix invalid check in text_or_ipa grammar
• Netlink: Fix FreeBSD build error
• Fix use-after-free in thread group reconfiguration
• Fix CentOS 7 and NetBSD build
• Fix several crashes in table export (already fixed in 3.0.2)
• Fix crash on graceful restart of a channel with ROA subscription
• Lots of internal tooling and CI updates

BIRD 3.1.0 (2025-04-01)

• CLI v2 compatibility layer for show route
• Thread configuration rework
• Merged 2.17

BIRD 3.0.2 (2025-04-01)

• Multiple route propagation crash fixes
• BGP export table route source leak
• Kernel export of source.specific routes fix
• Filter gw setting fix
• Merged 2.16.2

BIRD 3.0.1 (2025-01-10)

• BGP: Fixed crash in dynamic spawn
• BGP: Fixed crash in graceful recovery
• BGP: Fixed crash with deterministic med
• BGP: Renamed the otc attribute to bgp_otc
• BFD: Fixed crash in session reconfiguration
• Kernel: Fixed crash with merged paths
• Kernel: Simplified initial scan
• Tables: Fixed old best route propagation
• Tables: Fixed debug configuration propagation
• Tables: Fixed initial feeds
• CLI: Fixed buffer allocation heap bloating
• Reduced route attribute normalization heap bloating
• Merged 2.16.1

BIRD 3.0.0 (2024-12-17)

• from 2.16
  • Multithreaded execution
  • Decoupled exports from imports
  • Unified route attribute names
  • Slightly different log format
  • Separate reload command for filters and protocols
  • BGP: Export tables show the state as on wire
  • Lots of internal changes
• from 3.0alpha3
  • Merged changes from 2.16
  • BMP and MRT converted to the new API and working
  • Internal protocol state journal
  • Optimized table journal cleanup
  • Fixed show route export
  • Fixed minor bugs

BIRD 3.0alpha3 (2024-07-01)

• Merged 2.15.1
• Fixed major issues with channel reloads
• Fixed data inconsistencies in many corner cases
• Fixed internal scheduler corner cases
• MRT and BMP still switched off
• Expected one more alpha before stable

BIRD 3.0alpha2 (2023-05-11)

• Fixed memory leaks and use-after free bugs
• Simple thread work balancing
• MRT switched off
• Slow kernel route synchronization to be fixed later

BIRD 3.0alpha1 (2023-04-18)

• Worker threads for BGP, Pipe, RPKI and BFD
• Configurable number of threads
• Asynchronous route export
• Flat attribute structure
• Inline import tables
• Export tables merged with BGP prefix / attribute buckets
• Fixed ROA check locking inversion in route table dumps
• MRT switched off

BIRD 3.0-alpha0 (2022-02-07)

• Removal of fixed protocol-specific route attributes
• Asynchronous route export
• Explicit table import / export hooks
• Partially lockless route attribute cache
• Thread-safe resource management
• Thread-safe interface notifications
• Thread-safe protocol API
• Adoption of BFD IO loop for general use
• Parallel Pipe protocol
• Parallel RPKI protocol
• Parallel BGP protocol
• Lots of refactoring
• Bugfixes and improvements as they came along