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Mininet Installation/Configuration Notes
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The supported installation methods for Mininet are 1) using a
pre-built VM image, and 2) native installation on Ubuntu. You can also
easily create your own Mininet VM image (4).
(Other distributions may be supported in the future - if you would
like to contribute an installation script, we would welcome it!)
1. Easiest "installation" - use our pre-built VM image!
The easiest way to get Mininet running is to start with one of our
pre-built virtual machine images from <http://openflow.org/mininet>
Boot up the VM image, log in, and follow the instructions on the
Mininet web site.
One advantage of using the VM image is that it doesn't mess with
your native OS installation or damage it in any way.
Although a single Mininet instance can simulate multiple networks
with multiple controllers, only one Mininet instance may currently
be run at a time, and Mininet requires root access in the machine
it's running on. Therefore, if you have a multiuser system, you
may wish to consider running Mininet in a VM.
2. Next-easiest option: use our Ubuntu package!
To install Mininet itself (i.e. `mn` and the Python API) on Ubuntu
12.10+:
Note: if you are upgrading from an older version of Mininet, make
sure you remove the old OVS from `/usr/local`:
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/ovs*
sudo rm /usr/local/sbin/ovs*
3. Native installation from source on Ubuntu 11.10+
If you're reading this, you've probably already done so, but the
git clone git://github.com/mininet/mininet.git
If you are running Ubuntu, you may be able to use our handy
`install.sh` script, which is in `mininet/util`.
*WARNING: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!*
`install.sh` is a bit intrusive and may possibly damage your OS
and/or home directory, by creating/modifying several directories
such as `mininet`, `openflow`, `oftest`, `pox`, or `noxcosre`.
Although we hope it won't do anything completely terrible, you may
want to look at the script before you run it, and you should make
sure your system and home directory are backed up just in case!
To install Mininet itself, the OpenFlow reference implementation, and
Open vSwitch, you may use:
This should be reasonably quick, and the following command should
work after the installation:
To install ALL of the software which we use for OpenFlow tutorials,
including POX, the OpenFlow WireShark dissector, the `oftest`
framework, and other potentially useful software (and to add some
stuff to `/etc/sysctl.conf` which may or may not be useful) you may
This takes about 4 minutes on our test system.
4. Creating your own Mininet/OpenFlow tutorial VM
Creating your own Ubuntu Mininet VM for use with the OpenFlow tutorial
is easy! First, create a new Ubuntu VM. Next, run two commands in it:
wget https://raw.github.com/mininet/mininet/master/util/vm/install-mininet-vm.sh
time install-mininet-vm.sh
Finally, verify that Mininet is installed and working in the VM:
sudo mn --test pingall
5. Installation on other Linux distributions
Although we don't support other Linux distributions directly, it
should be possible to install and run Mininet with some degree of
manual effort.
* A Linux kernel compiled with network namespace support enabled
* An OpenFlow implementation (either the reference user or kernel
space implementations, or Open vSwitch.) Appropriate kernel
modules (e.g. tun and ofdatapath for the reference kernel
implementation) must be loaded.
* Python, `bash`, `ping`, `iperf`, etc.`
* Root privileges (required for network device access)
We encourage contribution of patches to the `install.sh` script to
support other Linux distributions.