core-extra/docs/install.md

Installation

• Table of Contents {:toc}

Overview

CORE provides a script to help automate installing all required software to build and run, including a python virtual environment to run it all in.

The following tools will be leveraged during installation:

Tool	Description
pip	used to install pipx
pipx	used to install standalone python tools (invoke, poetry)
invoke	used to run provided tasks (install, daemon, gui, tests, etc)
poetry	used to install the managed python virtual environment for running CORE

Required Hardware

Any computer capable of running Linux should be able to run CORE. Since the physical machine will be hosting numerous containers, as a general rule you should select a machine having as much RAM and CPU resources as possible.

Supported Linux Distributions

Plan is to support recent Ubuntu and CentOS LTS releases.

Verified:

• Ubuntu - 18.04, 20.04
• CentOS - 7.8, 8.0*

NOTE: Ubuntu 20.04 requires installing legacy ebtables for WLAN functionality

NOTE: CentOS 8 does not provide legacy ebtables support, WLAN will not function properly

NOTE: CentOS 8 does not have the netem kernel mod available by default

CentOS 8 Enabled netem:

sudo yum update
# restart into updated kernel
sudo yum install -y kernel-modules-extra
sudo modprobe sch_netem

Utility Requirements

• iproute2 4.5+ is a requirement for bridge related commands
• ebtables not backed by nftables

Upgrading

Please make sure to uninstall the previous installation of CORE cleanly before proceeding to install.

Previous install was built from source:

cd <CORE_REPO>
sudo make uninstall
make clean
./bootstrap.sh clean

Installed from previously built packages:

# centos
sudo yum remove core
# ubuntu
sudo apt remove core

Automated Installation

The automated install will install the various tools needed to help automate the CORE installation (python3, pip, pipx, invoke, poetry). The script will also automatically clone, build, and install the latest version of OSPF MDR. Finally it will install CORE scripts and a systemd service, which have been modified to use the installed poetry created virtual environment.

After installation has completed you should be able to run the various CORE scripts for running core.

NOTE: provide a prefix that will be found on path when running as sudo if the default prefix is not valid

# clone CORE repo
git clone https://github.com/coreemu/core.git
cd core

# run install script
# script usage: install.sh [-d] [-v]
#
# -v enable verbose install
# -d enable developer install
# -p install prefix, defaults to /usr/local
./install.sh

Unsupported Linux Distribution

If you are on an unsupported distribution, you can look into the install.sh and tasks.py files to see the various commands ran to install CORE and translate them to your use case, assuming it is possible.

If you get install down entirely, feel free to contribute and help others.

Installed Scripts

After the installation complete it will have installed the following scripts.

Name	Description
core-daemon	runs the backed core server providing TLV and gRPC APIs
core-gui	runs the legacy tcl/tk based GUI
core-pygui	runs the new python/tk based GUI
core-cleanup	tool to help removed lingering core created containers, bridges, directories
core-imn-to-xml	tool to help automate converting a .imn file to .xml format
core-route-monitor	tool to help monitor traffic across nodes and feed that to SDT
core-service-update	tool to update automate modifying a legacy service to match current naming
coresendmsg	tool to send TLV API commands from command line
core-cli	tool to query, open xml files, and send commands using gRPC
core-manage	tool to add, remove, or check for services, models, and node types

Running User Scripts

If you create your own python scripts to run CORE directly or using the gRPC/TLV APIs you will need to make sure you are running them within context of the installed virtual environment. To help support this CORE provides the core-python executable. This executable will allow you to enter CORE's python virtual environment interpreter or to run a script within it.

NOTE: the following assumes CORE has been installed successfully

core-python <script>

Manually Install EMANE

EMANE can be installed from deb or RPM packages or from source. See the EMANE GitHub for full details.

There is an invoke task to help with installing EMANE, but has issues, which attempts to build EMANE from source, but has issue on systems with older protobuf-compilers.

cd <CORE_REPO>
inv install-emane

Alternatively, you can build EMANE from source and install the python bindings into the core virtual environment.

The following would install the EMANE python bindings after being successfully built.

cd <CORE_REPO>/daemon
poetry run pip install <EMANE_REPO>/src/python

Using Invoke Tasks

The invoke tool installed by way of pipx provides conveniences for running CORE tasks to help ensure usage of the create python virtual environment.

inv --list

Available tasks:

  daemon            start core-daemon
  install           install core, poetry, scripts, service, and ospf mdr
  install-emane     install emane and the python bindings
  install-scripts   install core script files, modified to leverage virtual environment
  install-service   install systemd core service
  test              run core tests
  test-emane        run core emane tests
  test-mock         run core tests using mock to avoid running as sudo
  uninstall         uninstall core, scripts, service, virtual environment, and clean build directory

Print help for a given task:

inv -h install

Usage: inv[oke] [--core-opts] install [--options] [other tasks here ...]

Docstring:
  install core, poetry, scripts, service, and ospf mdr

Options:
  -d, --dev                    install development mode
  -p STRING, --prefix=STRING   prefix where scripts are installed, default is /usr/local
  -v, --verbose                enable verbose