MyVINI Administrators Guide

This document describes how to bring up a private VINI installation running the same software as the public VINI testbed, and how to configure it to create virtual topologies using Trellis. It assumes some familiarity with MyPLC.

Configuring MyPLC

1. Bring up a new MyPLC 4.3 installation as described in the MyPLC User's Guide. Don't install any nodes yet! Note: We recommend using the rc17 PlanetLab build.
2. Check out and run the MyVINI scripts on your MyPLC server. Note that these scripts assume you have connectivity from your MyPLC server and nodes to VINI Central.
   

   # svn co http://svn.planet-lab.org/svn/MyVINI/trunk MyVINI
   # cd MyVINI
   # ./myvini.sh
   

3. Configure the topology daemon. Edit /root/topo/topology.py so that it reflects the physical topology of your network. Look at VINI's topology.py for an example.

Installing the nodes

The first time you install a node (i.e., set its boot state to "reinstall" and reboot) the installation may appear to fail with an error like:

Creating root device
 Mounting root filesystem.
mount: could not find filesystem '/dev/root'
 setting up other file system.
setting up new root fs
setuproot: moving /dev failed: No such file or directory
no fstab.sys, mounting internal defaults
setuproot: error mounting /proc: No such file or directory
setuproot: error mouting /sys : No such file or directory
Switching to new root and running init
unmounting old /dev
unmounting old /proc
unmounting old /sys
switchroot: mount failed : No such file or directory
Booting has failed.

Don't worry about this, it's "normal". Manually power cycle the machine at this point. The node should come back up, automatically reboot once or twice, and eventually display something like the following on the console:

VINI Node: foobar.vini-veritas.net
Kernel 2.6.27.45-vs2.3.0.36.4.6.planetlab on an i686
http://vini-veritas.net/

This machine is a node in the VINI distributed network. If you
require assistance in administering this node, please contact
support@vini-veritas.net.

Console login to this node is restricted to site_admin.

Now the VINI node is ready for use.

Configuring Trellis

The Trellis tools currently support four "modes" of virtual topology creation. The "mode" for a slice can be selected by setting the vini_topo attribute as follows:

1. none Do not allow virtual network creation for this slice. All slices in this mode will share the node's physical NIC (aka "PlanetLab Classic" mode).
2. vsys Allow script-based virtual topology creation in the slice as described in the Trellis Power User Guide.
3. iias Automatically create and configure virtual links between nodes in the slice, if the nodes belong to directly-connected sites in the physical topology (as described in the topology.py file you edited earlier).
4. manual Lets the MyPLC administrator manually set the topo_rspec slice attributes (experts only!). If you have configured the SFA as an interface for topology creation on VINI, it will set the attribute to this value when it configures a virtual topology for a node.

The next time the topology daemon runs, it will read the vini_topo slice attribute and configure the slice for the virtual topology mode you have selected.