OS Installation

Base OS installation

Our platform is built on top of ​Ubuntu 12.04.04. The installation iso used was ​ubuntu-12.04.4-server-amd64.iso. The following settings were applied during the installation process:

1. Choose relevant language and keyboard settings
2. We expect eth2 is the up-link interface (used to internet access and remote control) and should be interface chosen for installation. It is also expected that eth2 will be connect to a network that will assign it a dhcp address.
3. Specify a local USERNAME/PASSWORD combo. Please keep track of this information, it will be required for all setup procedures later on.
4. Specify Manual partitioning and partition the disk as follows (be sure to unmount /dev/sda when asked to do so):

Number	Type	Size	Flags	File System	Mount Point
1	Primary	20GB	Bootable	Ext4	/
2	Primary	20GB		Ext4	/home
3	Primary	116GB		Ext4	/export
4	Primary	4GB		Swap

5. Leave the http Proxy field empty
6. specify NO AUTOMATIC UPDATES. This is important as the auto-update process may break some orbit packages.
7. Choose opensssh server in the task selection menu. All other tasks will be installed as seprate packages and do not need to be specified here.
8. Answer Yes to installing grub on the local boot disk
9. Remove the media (and the drive if needed) and reboot.

Note:

• If no explicit instruction is given for a setting, it's safe to assume the default should work.
• This version of Ubuntu does not work well with USB flash disk installations, The best results are with a burned CD/DVD and a USB CD/DVD drive as a the boot medium,​refrenced here.

Configure Host Name

A important initial step specifying the hostname of the console. Many of the later services will depend heavily on this name resolution. It is assumed that the general form of the console's fully qualified domain name (FQDN) is console.geni.DOMAIN, where DOMAIN comes from your organization. As an example the DOMAIN for Rutgers is rutgers.edu.

To set the host name edit the follow files (here we assumed that DOMAIN = rutgers.edu):

• /etc/hosts - Local file for name resolution. e.g.

  127.0.0.1       localhost
  127.0.1.1       console.geni.rutgers.edu console
  
  # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts
  ::1     ip6-localhost ip6-loopback
  fe00::0 ip6-localnet
  ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix
  ff02::1 ip6-allnodes
  ff02::2 ip6-allrouters
  

• /etc/hostname - Modify this file to properly resolve the hostname of the machine. e.g.

  console.geni.rutgers.edu
  

Configure Networking

For proper operation, the console is expected to be connected to multiple networks. Their respective names and purposes are:

• Data - For experiment traffic, Ideally this is in a separate switch plane to avoid mixing / clobbering control traffic (default IP range: 10.20.X.Y)
• CM - Low speed network for soft control of power and terminal output of each node (default IP range: 10.1.X.Y)
• Control - Management and control traffic to the Nodes. This network is used for imaging and is needs to be fast. Ideal on a non-blocking switch with good back plane throughput. (default IP range: 10.10.X.Y)
• GENI Control - GENI-wide control network that provides global BS management services (default IP range: 10.3.U.X)
• GENI Data - GENI-wide network for wireless client traffic (default IP range: 10.43.U.Y)
• Outside - External access for the console. Mostly for remote control and package updates.

The addresses for GENI networks have to confirm to the global address assignment.

To establish access to proper address spaces, we put appropriate rules in the /etc/network/interfaces file. We assume the following mapping of interfaces to subnets:

Single Basestation Site (all services on the console)

In this confgiuration, the console needs access to all 6 subnets and needs at least one interface to be configured as a trunk with multiple VLANs. In this example configuration file, VLAN 4004 is used for local Data subnet, VLAN 4002 is used for GENI Control and VLAN 4000 is used for GENI Data (note that this interface really doesn't need to have an IP address since it is used mainly for bridging outside world to the internal OVS/Click datapath switch).

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The Control network interface
auto eth3
iface eth3 inet static
      address 10.10.0.254
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      broadcast 10.10.0.255

# The  Data network interface
auto eth0.4004
iface eth0.12 inet static
      address 10.20.0.254
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      broadcast 10.20.0.255

# The GENI-Control network interface
# The address assignment is given in
# http://wimax.orbit-lab.org/wiki/aaOperations#IPaddressassignment
auto eth0.4002
iface eth0.4000 inet static
      address 10.3.0.254
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      broadcast 10.3.0.255

# The GENI-Data network interface
# The address assignment is given in
# http://wimax.orbit-lab.org/wiki/aaOperations#IPaddressassignment
auto eth0.4000
iface eth0.4000 inet manual
      pre-up ifconfig $IFACE up
      post-down ifconfig $IFACE down

# The CM network interface
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
      address 10.1.0.254
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      broadcast 10.1.0.255

# The primary outside access network interface
#(assumes NAT-ed and firewall-ed configuration)
auto eth2
iface eth2 inet static
      address 10.50.0.249
      netmask 255.255.0.0
      gateway 10.50.0.1
      dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8

Multiple Basestations Site (separate BS controller server)

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The Control network interface
auto eth3
iface eth3 inet static
      address 10.10.0.254
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      broadcast 10.10.0.255

# The  Data network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
      address 10.20.0.254
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      broadcast 10.20.0.255

# The CM network interface
auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
      address 10.1.0.254
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      broadcast 10.1.0.255

# The primary outside access network interface
#(assumes NAT-ed and firewall-ed configuration)
auto eth2
iface eth2 inet static
      address 10.50.0.249
      netmask 255.255.0.0
      gateway 10.50.0.1
      dns-nameservers 8.8.8.8

Note: The dns-nameservers is a temporary setting, we'll need to reconfigure the console to resolve against it self once the DNS service is installed

Additional Instructions when using 14.04 instead

Also edit /etc/default/grub, and make sure the lines match the below:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="biosdevname=0"

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="biosdevname=0"

Then run sudo update-grub