In general you should expect that compiling libnetconf and netopeer in Ubuntu will be a bumpy ride. I tried compiling on 32-bit 12.04 LTS and 64-bit 13.10 and had to take many admin actions to solve problems here and there. 

Folks on libnetconf google groups helped a lot. 


1. Install libxml2 (http://xmlsoft.org/)
2. Install libxslt

You might find this error

config.status: executing libtool commands
/bin/rm: cannot remove 'libtoolT': No such file or directory

Solution:

edit file <configure> and change this line:

$RM "$cfgfile"

to

$RM -f "$cfgfile"


3. Install libssh2 (www.libssh2.org/)
  It will need openssl or libgcrypt

4. Install libdbus-dev package

(Important) Do not replace current dbus on Ubuntu by the one in (dbus.freedesktop.org). it is a critical part of the system. I did that and had to recover/reinstall Ubuntu. 


5. Install doxygen


6. Pull, Compile and Install libnetconf (code.google.com/p/libnetconf/)

git clone https://code.google.com/p/libnetconf/

  At the time of writing:
  - If you disable notifications (as below) in libnetconf, netopeer will not compile

  $ ./configure --disable-notifications

The step below is very important otherwise when it is time to test you will hit an access denied issue.

./configure --with-nacm-recovery-uid=uid

the uid above is the uid of the person that will use netopeer-cli to test drive the server. In my case it was 1000, therefore

./configure --with-nacm-recovery-uid=1000

7. Pull netopeer, you will get 4 directories.

git clone https://code.google.com/p/netopeer/

7.1 Compiling server-sl

You will need to install libevent

 Compiling Multi-Level server
  netopeer/server: ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc
  make
  make doc (without this step install script fails)
  sudo make install

7.2 Compiling cli

If you get this error:

checking for readline in -lreadline... no
configure: error: Missing libreadline

you might need to install ncurses (http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ncurses/), and readline (http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/readline/). If you already have these installed, you might need the dev version of the libraries.

At the time of this writing I could not find a 64-bit readline package so I downloaded and compiled version 6.2

After each step you should do <sudo ldconfig>

Finally ./configure LIBS=-lncurses CPPFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include/libxml2

9. Patch your SSHd configuration. The netconf server (single-level, for instance) will be called automagically by sshd when a netconf client connects. In Ubuntu the file is /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Port 830
Subsystem netconf /usr/local/bin/netopeer-server-sl

Restart SSH

sudo service ssh stop
sudo service ssh start

If sshd does not start probably the configuration file has a problem. 

Try sudo /usr/sbin/sshd -p 22 -D -d -e to see any issues.

10. Access denied issue in server-sl

Issue:

netconf> edit running-config
edit: no such command, type 'help' for more information.
netconf> edit-config running

  Type the edit configuration data (close editor by Ctrl-D):
<toaster xmlns="http://netconfcentral.org/ns/toaster"/>

NETCONF error: access-denied (application) - creating "toaster" data node is not permitted.

Solution (David Kupka):

This is correct behavior as defined in Section 3.7.1 of RFC 6536 (http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6536#section-3.7.1).

In libnetconf documentation there is page that should help You configure the Access Control Module: http://libnetconf.googlecode.com/git/doc/doxygen/html/dd/d59/nacm.html

See previous step on libnetconf and uid