Installation¶

Requires Python 3.11 or newer.

From PyPI¶

pip install python-netgear-switch-library
# or
uv add python-netgear-switch-library

The base install has one runtime dependency, cryptography, used by the HTTPS-certificate upload path to convert an RSA private key to the PKCS#1 “traditional” form the GS728TPP firmware requires — without shelling out to openssl.

Extras¶

Each backend’s transport is optional, so an SNMP-only deployment does not pull in an HTTP stack, and vice versa.

Extra	Installs	Needed for
`[async]`	pysnmp	The asynchronous SNMP transport used by `AsyncSwitch`.
`[http]`	httpx	Every web-UI backend, synchronous and asynchronous.
`[ssh]`	paramiko (<3), pyserial	The FASTPATH CLI over SSH and over a serial console.
`[mcp]`	mcp	The `ngsw-mcp` server (see MCP server).
`[docs]`	Sphinx and every optional dependency	Building this documentation.

pip install 'python-netgear-switch-library[async,http,ssh]'

Note

paramiko is pinned below 3.0 deliberately. The FASTPATH firmware on the GSM7252PS and M4300 only offers diffie-hellman-group14-sha1 key exchange and an ssh-rsa (SHA-1) host key, both of which paramiko 3.0 dropped from its defaults. The SSH transport also re-inserts those algorithms explicitly, so the pin is belt-and-braces — see src/netgear_switch/transport/cli/ssh.py.

The net-snmp system dependency¶

The synchronous SNMP transport shells out to the net-snmp command-line tools rather than binding a Python SNMP library. Those tools are a system package, not a Python dependency:

sudo apt install snmp     # provides snmpget, snmpbulkwalk, snmpset

Without them, synchronous SNMP operations fail; NSDP, HTTP and CLI backends are unaffected, as is the asynchronous SNMP transport, which uses pysnmp from the [async] extra.

Debian and Ubuntu¶

Signed .deb packages for Debian trixie and sid are published to a GitHub Pages apt repository:

sudo install -d -m0755 /etc/apt/keyrings
curl -fsSL https://mith.ro/python-netgear-switch-library/python-netgear-switch-library.gpg \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/keyrings/python-netgear-switch-library.gpg > /dev/null

# trixie:
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/python-netgear-switch-library.gpg] https://mith.ro/python-netgear-switch-library/trixie/ ./" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/python-netgear-switch-library.list
# sid:
echo "deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/python-netgear-switch-library.gpg] https://mith.ro/python-netgear-switch-library/sid/ ./" \
  | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/python-netgear-switch-library.list

sudo apt update
sudo apt install python3-netgear-switch-library

This installs the netgear_switch library and the ngsw CLI, and pulls in the net-snmp tools automatically. The packaging lives in debian/ and packaging/.

Versioning¶

A rolling release. The version is derived from git describe by hatch-vcs: X.Y at a vX.Y tag, X.Y.postN N commits after it (0.1, 0.1.post1, …). Every merge to main whose CI run is green publishes to PyPI and to the apt repository — a red run publishes nothing. No manual version bumps — see RELEASING.md.

Note

Because the version comes from git history, a shallow clone produces a wrong or failing version. Build systems that clone shallowly need git fetch --unshallow; this documentation’s own Read the Docs build does exactly that, in .readthedocs.yaml.

Verifying the install¶

ngsw models        # lists every registered switch model
ngsw --help

No switch is needed for either. To exercise a real protocol without hardware, start a mock — see Running mock switches.