Update instructions for Ubuntu 24.04/ later (VENV, mininet issues)

[noleti]

We recently tested minicps installation process, and had issues with Ubuntu 24.04. This issue is intended to document our current process to get everything to work with minimal changes. We should eventually create a PR to update the documentation.

Main issues: mininet build process is currently broken (it seems mininet is not maintained since a while), and the forced switch to VENVs in Ubuntu complicates the pip part. Further complications are due to the heavy use of sudo in both mininet and minicps (root UID needed for namespaces etc).

Proposed solution summary: completely execute installations and later runs as root user, via sudo su or similar. Create a venv for root and activate it. In addition, use mininet-wifi fork and build without the wireless parts (i.e., use only the following arguments for the installation: bash util/install.sh -nfv)

[noleti]

More detailed instructions for setup on 24.04. Assumes we install everything into a net folder called ~/cpss
Uses temporary branch and fixes from PR #42

mkdir ~/cpss
cd ~/cpss
sudo su
python3 -m venv myvenv
. myvenv/bin/activate
python --version #as expected, python3
pip install mininet
apt install openvswitch-testcontroller openvswitch-switch
mn --test pingall #should work
git clone https://github.com/scy-phy/minicps.git
cd minicps
git checkout sudo-fix
pip install .
make swat-s1-init

Then, make swat-s1 should start that example. Once you are done, you can/should leave the venv with deactivate on the bash. If you want to resume work with minicps later, use cd ~/cpss/; sudo su; . myenv/bin/activate; cd minicps.

Note: as alternative to

pip install mininet
apt install openvswitch-testcontroller openvswitch-switch

you can checkout mininet-wifi git repo, and install it with bash util/install.sh -nfv

[afmurillo]

Hi, just a small comment on my side: "numpy==2.2.6" broke DHALSIM, as that version is not available on Ubuntu 20.04. I will try getting DHALSIM back to work without the numpy==2.2.6 requirement and then I think start a similar process to move DHALSIM to Ubuntu 24.

[noleti]

Thanks. We are talking about the sudo-fix branch, right? I don't think it even uses numpy any more, the pinned dependency might be outdated. Can you try to install this branch and just remove the dependency?

I just did on my end (Ubuntu 24.04), and following the instructions above (and deleting numpy requirement) worked.

grep -R numpy * does not give results in the minicps directory.

[noleti]

I pushed fc4c5b3 now to remove the dependency. Still on the sudo-fix branch

[afmurillo]

Thank you Nils, I'll try in afternoon the installation without the dependency. Also thank you for the work around for Ubuntu24.04, I will try that too to migrate DHALSIM to Ubuntu24.04