Deploying and Initializing the Virtual Network

Perform these steps on your local PC to deploy and initialize a virtual network.

1. In the Makefile, change CONFIG to point to the Ruby configuration file that describes your virtual network topology and routing protocols (e.g., config/vini.rb). For more information on how to generate the configuration file, read Configuring a Virtual Network.

2. Generate the configuration files for all nodes.

   # make configs

   or just

   # make

   Note that the script logs into each node in your experiment to find out information about that node, so make sure you are running ssh-agent with your PlanetLab key before running this step.

3. Sync up files to the PlanetLab nodes.

   # make sync

   This will copy everything (necessary scripts, configuration files, RPMs, etc.) into ~/vini on each PlanetLab node. Since it uses 'rsync', it may take a while the first time you run it, but after that it should be faster. You need to run this step every time you rebuild the configuration files, and also when you upgrade the software (e.g., to a new Click release).

4. Install any required RPMs on the boxes, install the file system image that UML runs from.

   # make install

   On each node, this command execute two other Makefile targets: install_rpms and get_uml_fs. You only need to run this the first time you deploy the PL-VINI software in your slice, or if you are upgrading the software.

5. Start up the overlay. There are two methods: with each virtual console running in a separate xterm, or using the screen program manage all virtual consoles in a single window.

   1. With each virtual console running in a separate xterm:

      # make uml

      An xterm is opened for each node, and you can watch UML boot.

   2. Using the screen program manage all virtual consoles in a single window:

      # make uml_screen

      This starts the screen program in the background, managing the virtual consoles of all UML instances in the experiment. To connect to a console, type:

      # screen -r vini

      And then <ctrl>-A " to get a list of all consoles.

   If you are running XORP, it will print lots of cryptic error messages as it initializes -- this does not necessarily mean that anything is wrong. After XORP starts up (this may take up to a minute), it will begin running the routing protocols on the virtual network and downloading FTEs to Click's forwarding table. Quagga is much quieter and perhaps a bit quicker too.

6. To shut down the overlay:

   # make stop

   Or, if this doesn't seem to do the trick, you can try the more drastic:

   # make nuke

Note that, once the PL-VINI software has been initially deployed and installed in your slice, you can skip step 4.

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