A good reference to start ovs and openflow on Geni

[Arezou]

Hello,

I was wondering what is the best and updated reference that I can use as a beginner to install openvswitch on a VM on Geni? I tried the ovs installation guide in the example at  http://geni-app-developer-documentation.readthedocs.org/en/latest/examples/example-3.html  it is not working properly. Specifically, I ran the following commands:

$ apt-get update
$ apt-get install openvswitch-datapath-source bridge-utils
$ module-assistant auto-install openvswitch-datapath
$ apt-get install openvswitch-brcompat openvswitch-common

I am getting the following error after running the last command above:

.... (THIS IS NOT THE COMPLETE ERROR, but only the part when the problem starts:)

Setting up openvswitch-switch (1.4.6-0ubuntu1.12.04.5) ...

* Inserting openvswitch module

* /etc/openvswitch/conf.db does not exist

* Creating empty database /etc/openvswitch/conf.db

* Starting ovsdb-server

2015-10-13T17:19:02Z|00002|stream_unix|WARN|/usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock: connection failed (No such file or directory)

2015-10-13T17:19:02Z|00003|reconnect|WARN|unix:/usr/local/var/run/openvswitch/db.sock: connection attempt failed (No such file or directory)

.... 

The complete error log is attached in a separate file.

Thank you for your help in advance! :)

-Arezou

[Deniz Gurkan]

I was wondering what is the best and updated reference that I can use as a beginner to install openvswitch on a VM on Geni?

I came across with this more recent tutorial page on the GENI wiki: http://groups.geni.net/geni/wiki/GENIExperimenter/Tutorials/OpenFlowOVS 

 

I tried the ovs installation guide in the example at  http://geni-app-developer-documentation.readthedocs.org/en/latest/examples/example-3.html  it is not working properly.

The page seems to be not updated since 2012 and it is referring to Flack as the main tool, which is now discontinued. 

We are using geni-lib python library as our tool to instantiate OVS as forwarding elements in SDN experiments: http://geni-lib.readthedocs.org 

There is a basic setup with one OVS and two hosts included on this page: http://geni-lib.readthedocs.org/en/latest/tutorials/simplevts.html 

Hope this helps.

Deniz

[Arezou]

Thanks a lot, Deniz. I will look at the those links.

-Arezou

[Arezou]

Thanks again, Deniz, it is working and I learned other helpful tools at Geni as well! :)

[nriga]

Hi, 

In the tutorial that Deniz pointed out you will see that we are using a custom image of Ubuntu 14.04 with OVS 2.3.1 installed. If this is what you need you are all set, no need to install OVS yourself, you can also access this image from the GUI at the GENI Portal. 

 If for whatever reason this will not work for you, then let me explain the error you are getting: 

  * I believe that you are using the default Ubuntu 12.04 image that comes with some version of user space OVS installed that conflicts with what you try to do. Uninstalling it i tricky. There are some old instructions here:

http://groups.geni.net/geni/wiki/HowTo/InstallOVSInProtoGENI

   * If you start from the Ubuntu 14.04 image you can install with apt-get but you will get OVS 2.0.2 which I think does not support OpenFlow 1.3

Of course using VTS is also a very good option, you just might be limited in the sites that support this. 

Cheers, 

Niky

[Deniz Gurkan]

Thanks again, Deniz, it is working and I learned other helpful tools at Geni as well! :)

Can you tell us what has worked? 

And, can you elaborate on what other helpful GENI tools you learned about? 

This is for the educational benefit of my lab and students as well as myself. :-)

Deniz

 

[Arezou]

Thank you, Niky, for the explanation. That can be useful in the future.

-Arezou

[Arezou]

Deniz,

I couldn't install OVS on ubunta 12.04. So what I meant by working was just the installation of OVS.

I didn't mean helpful tools in Geni, but I should correct it to helpful info. For example the example in that link that you sent me have some similarity with the project I want to use Geni for. So that will be a good start. Also, from that link I realized that I had the option of not installing OVS or POX manually myself on a VM, but selecting a vm that will automatically install them for me, which was very convenient. (The manual installation process that you sent me worked as well.)

Nothing that important and I am guessing you already knew them. I am just a beginner.

Thanks again!

-Arezou