VM Creation Notes

Creating a Mininet VM from Scratch

These instructions cover the process of building a Mininet-capable VM from scratch, using Ubuntu 12.10. For setup instructions, see VM-Setup-Notes.

Note: If you need to build on a non-Ubuntu distro, you are currently on your own. The included shell scripts may work on your platform, but significant changes are likely (e.g. yum vs. apt-get and different package names for Fedora.)

First, create a new Ubuntu 12.10 VM (using VMware, VirtualBox, etc..) We use user: mininet and password: mininet in our default VM, but any user/password combo should work as long as it has admin/sudo privileges.

Next, log in to the new VM and do the following:

wget https://raw.github.com/mininet/mininet/master/util/vm/install-mininet-vm.sh
time bash install-mininet-vm.sh

After this completes (about 5 minutes), Mininet should work:

$ sudo mn --test pingall

That's it!

For historical reference, we have also preserved the Old VM Creation Notes.

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How we created the Mininet 2.0.0 VM Image

In the future, these steps will be automated, but for now there are several manual steps.

1. Created a new VM mininet-vm in VMware using the Ubuntu 12.10 server amd64 image with easy install, and mininet for all user information and passwords.

2. Customized it by increasing the memory to 1536 MB.

3. Booted VM and let easy install complete (~5min)

4. Ran the following commands (~4min):

    wget https://raw.github.com/mininet/mininet/master/util/vm/install-mininet-vm.sh
    time bash install-mininet-vm.sh
    sudo mn --test pingall
   

5. Shut down and ran the following (~3min):

    echo "Converting to OVF"
    time /Applications/VMware\ OVF\ Tool/ovftool mininet-vm.vmx mininet-vm.ovf
    echo "Fixing OVF so it works with VirtualBox" 
    sed -i -e '/vmw:Config/d' mininet-vm.ovf
    echo "Updating SHA1 checksums"
    openssl sha1 mininet-vm.ovf mininet-vm-disk1.vmdk > mininet-vm.mf
    echo "Moving OVF to its own directory"
    mkdir mininet-ovf
    mv mininet-vm-disk1.vmdk mininet-vm.{mf,ovf} mininet-ovf
    echo "Zipping OVF"
    zip -r mininet-ovf mininet-ovf
    mv mininet-ovf.zip mininet-2.0.0-113012-amd64-ovf.zip
   

6. Uploaded to github (~10min)

   https://github.com/mininet/mininet/downloads

   File to upload: mininet-ovf.zip mininet-2.0.0-113012-amd64-ovf.zip
   Short Description: Mininet 2.0.0rc1 VM - Ubuntu 12.10 server 64-bit - OVF - 11.30.12

7. Downloaded from github (~10min)

8. Unzipped and imported into VirtualBox (~3min)

9. Booted, logged in, and tested with

   sudo mn --test pingall
   

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I didn't do the following:

1. Removed DHCP leases

    cd /var/lib/dhcp/
    rm *lease*
   

   This may not be the right thing to do, as it causes the VirtualBox VM boot to hang for 60+ seconds at "waiting for network configuration."

2. Shut down VM and added an additional private (host-only) network interface.

   This also didn't seem to work as the OVF was imported into VirtualBox with only one interface.