Dear Tyrasuki, please try to convert all to unix kind end of line as this should help. Please let us know about the outcome. We are dealing with more pressing issues at the moment. Thank you for understanding and good luck! Happy routing, Jana Jana Babovakova (she/her) | BIRD Tech Support | CZ.NIC, z.s.p.o. On 20. 05. 25 18:47, Tyrasuki via Bird-users wrote:
Hi there,
I am experiencing bird throwing a <FATAL> Unknown character error on my configuration files. I suspect this might be related to CRLF vs LF, as all the positions it reports unknown character seems to be EOL or blank spaces. I should mention I am currently writing my configuration on a Windows machine, but it has passed between Linux and Windows a couple times.
As an example, trying to start BIRD 3.1.0 on an Alpine Linux edge box gives the following:
ns2:~# bird bird: 2025-05-20 18:39:55.659 [0001] <FATAL> /etc/bird.d/defines/constants.def:2:31 Unknown character ns2:~# head /etc/bird.d/defines/constants.def # Local preference values define LP_UPSTREAM = 100; define LP_PEER = 200; define LP_DOWNSTREAM = 300; define LP_OTHER = 150; # ASNs define AS_SELF = 209718; define AS_BOGON = [ 0, ns2:~#
if I merge the second line with the first line to look like this: define LP_UPSTREAM = 100;define LP_PEER = 200;
I get
ns2:~# bird bird: 2025-05-20 18:41:02.547 [0001] <FATAL> /etc/bird.d/defines/constants.def:2:61 Unknown character
Similarly, on another box running Debian 12 with the pkg.labs.nic.cz repository, on BIRD 3.1.1: bird3:~# bird bird: 2025-05-20 18:42:01.451 [0001] <FATAL> /etc/bird/bird.conf:1:26 Unknown character bird3:~# head /etc/bird/bird.conf router id 172.30.187.148;
log "/var/log/bird.log" { error };
ipv6 table master6; ipv4 table master4;
include "filters/netlist/*.list"; include "filters/AS.list"; include "define/*.def"; bird3~#
Any suggestions would be welcome, as I am currently in the process of refractoring my routers from BIRD1 to BIRD3, and this has put me at a bit of a standstill. :)
Kind regards, and thank you in advance for any response, Jori Vanneste / Tyrasuki