Installing ns-3-dce

Date of writing: June 29, 2011
Warning: This document may get outdated surprisingly quickly.

This is a short guide to how to install ns-3-dce and how to compile the adjoining applications to test it. The instructions on how to compile the applications correctly is given in the comments section of the file src/dce/model/dce-manager.h . However, they are not very easy to find and not exhaustive. Also, the information on the ns3-dce portability page is also outdated.

Architecture: i386, Ubuntu 10.04.2 (LTS)
libc: 2.11.1

To find the libc version: Execute /lib/libc.so.6

Fetching and installing ns-3-dce

1. Started with a fresh install of the operating system.
2. sudo aptitude update
3. sudo aptitude install build-essentials g++
   These are the prerequisites for compilation.
4. sudo aptitude install mercurial bzr git-core
   These are the prerequisites for repository management.
5. sudo aptitude install libc6-dbg
   The debug symbols are required for ns-3-dce.
6. Following instructions on the ns-3-tutorial:
   • cd
   • mkdir repos
   • cd repos
   • hg clone http://code.nsnam.org/ns-3-allinone
7. Fetching ns-3-dce-old to complie:
   
   • cd ns-3-allinone
   • ./download.py -n mathieu/ns-3-dce-old
     This takes $\approx$ 15 minutes
   • ./download.py -n mathieu/ns-3-linux
     This will end in an error, which is to be ignored.
8. There are some functions which are not currently present in the libc-ns3 which are required to run iperf and other examples. To use these, we will need to patch the dce module. This is a culmination of thehajime's fix and some code written following Frederic's advice.
   • Download this patch and copy it to the ns-3-dce-old folder.
   • patch -p1 < libc_patch.patch
     This should patch three files with the additional functions needed.
9. After this, ns-3-dce-old can be compiled but we will get the kernel to compile it with support for the kernel's network stack.
   • After this update, it has become a little complicated to get the source code for linux kernel:
     • cd ns-3-linux
     • git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/davem/net-next-2.6.git
       This takes a while $\approx$ 20 mins (500 Mb of data).
     • git reset --hard fed66381d65a35198639f564365e61a7f256bf79
       This resets the kernel to the version which can compile with ns-3-dce .
     • touch .download.ts
       This tells the Makefile not to try to download the kernel again.
     • Building the kernel:
       • make setup
         Put the necessary patches in place
       • make defconfig
         Configure the kernel using the default configuration. There are other options available for configuring the kernel.
       • make
         Compiling the kernel's network stack to obtain the library file to use with ns-3-dce.
       • cp libnet-next-2.6.so ../ns-3-dce-old
         Copy the Linux library to the correct place.
       • Note: It is recommended in src/dce/doc/doc.rst that after debugging everything, one should make the kernel with optimizations to run the simulations faster:
         make OPT=yes
         This might explain in part the slow speed of the examples.
10. Configuring the system:
    ./waf configure --disable-python --with-linux-stack=../ns-3-linux
    The python bindings do not compile currently. The --prefix option can be used to change the default location of final installation.
    
11. Building the system:
    ./waf build
12. Install the system libraries:
    sudo ./waf install
    This puts the libraries by default in /usr/local/lib unless otherwise stated using the --prefix option during configuration.

Compiling iproute2

I will keep all the source code confined to the ˜/repos directory to make the relative references easier.

1. cd ˜/repos
2. wget http://devresources.linuxfoundation.org/dev/iproute2/download/iproute2-2.6.33.tar.bz2
3. tar xvf iproute2-2.6.33.tar.bz2
4. cd iproute2-2.6.33
5. sudo aptitude install bison flex
   Needed for compilation.
6. sudo aptitude install libdb4.8-dev
   For dependence on db_185.h
7. make CCOPTS='-fPIC -D_GNU_SOURCE' LDFLAGS=-pie
   
   • CCOPTS='-fPIC': Produces Position Independent Code, which is required for the ELF loader.
   • CCOPTS='-D_GNU_SOURCE': Relaxes certain constraints on the source code which allows for successful compilation.
   • LDFLAGS='-pie': Create a position independent executable.
   Apart from these, there are a few other parameters suggested in the file src/dce/doc/doc.rst, which were not required for execution on this system, but may be needed for others:
   • CCOPTS='-O0': This disables optimization of the produced binary.
   • CCOPTS='-U_FORTIFY_SOURCE': This disables checking for stack overflow, etc. which requires more functions from glibc to be implemented in libc-ns3.
8. ln -s /full/path/to/iproute2-2.6.33/ip/ip ../ns-3-allinone/ns-3-dce-old
   This is where ns-3-dce example dce-linux-simple expects the executable to be.

However, to get tc recompiled, it seems that you need to run bison by hand:

• cd tc
• bison -d -t -v -o emp_ematch.yacc.c emp_ematch.y

Compiling iperf

1. cd ˜/repos
2. Download source code for iperf to ˜repos and extract it and change directory.
3. CFLAGS=-fPIC CXXFLAGS=-fPIC LDFLAGS=-pie ./configure
   The use of the parameters is as suggested above.
4. make
5. ln -s /full/path/to/iperf/src/iperf ../ns-3-allinone/ns-3-dce-old/build/debug/
   This is where ns-3-dce example dce-iperf expects the executable to be.

Compiling iputils

1. cd ˜/repos
2. wget http://www.skbuff.net/iputils/iputils-s20101006.tar.bz2
   Download the source code and then extract it.
3. sudo aptitude install libsysfs-dev libssl-dev
   Required to compile arping and ping6. They provide sysfs/libsysfs.h and openssl/md5.h respectively.
4. Edit Makefile and replace CFLAGS= with CFLAGS+=
5. make CFLAGS='-fPIC -D_GNU_SOURCE' LDFLAGS=-pie
   Options used here are explained above.
6. ln -s /full/path/to/iputils/ping ˜/repos/ns-3-allinone/ns-3-dce-old/build/debug
   This is where ns-3-dce example dce-linear expects the executable to be.

Troubleshooting

If you get the error which looks like:

utkarsh@ns3-testbed:~/repos/ns-3-allinone/ns-3-dce-old$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH='/usr/local/lib/' ./build/debug/src/dce/example/dce-linux-simple
./build/debug/src/dce/example/dce-linux-simple: relocation error: /lib/tls/i686/cmov/librt.so.1: symbol __pthread_once, version GLIBC_2.0 not defined in file libpthread.so.0 with link time reference

Then, try to run the programs with LD_LIBRARY_PATH='/lib/:/usr/local/lib/. This could have happened because the path to glibc might have changed to the Thread Local Support libraries (/lib/tls/), which apparently do not play well with the ELF loader. Reverting to the normal libraries in /lib should fix this issue.

Running with GDB

Mathieu recommends running the CVS version of Gdb with ns-3-dce in /src/dce/doc/dce.rst. He also has this very useful advice therein:

If you use gdb (a CVS or stable version), do not forget to execute the following command prior to running any DCE-based program:::

  (gdb) handle SIGUSR1 nostop
  Signal        StopPrintPass to programDescription
  SIGUSR1       NoYesYesUser defined signal 1
  (gdb)

An alternate way to do this and avoid having to repeat this command ad-nauseam involves creating a .gdbinit file in your ns-3-dce directory and putting this inside:

handle SIGUSR1 nostop

Running the examples

For all these examples, the LD_LIBRARY_PATH should be set as /usr/local/lib. The output of the processes is stored in the files produced in the folders $files-\left\{ 0, 1 \right\}$ have the output logs of the processes.

1. ip: ./build/debug/src/dce/examples/dce-linux-simple
   This example also loads the Kernel stack. The execution takes about 4 minutes. The output produced in the folders files{0,1} and is as expected from src/dce/doc/doc.rst

2. iperf: ./build/debug/src/dce/examples/dce-iperf
   This examples does not seem to terminate, though the output produced in the folders files{0,1} indicate that the iperf processes are started properly on both the client and the server nodes, but no messages are produced.

3. ping: Running ping is slightly more complicated:
   • cd src/dce/examples/dce-linear.cc scratch/
     Make a copy of dce-linear.cc in the scratch folder to experiment with.
   • cd src/dce/examples/uss-for-pid.py .
     This python file is required by the dce-linear example.
   • Edit the file scratch/dce-linear.cc and change the line: oss « ``examples/process/uss-for-pid.py'' « pid;
     with:
     oss « ``./uss-for-pid.py'' « pid;
     and save the file.
   • ./waf --run scratch/dce-linear
     The following two errors might occur:
     • OSError: [Error 2] No such file of directory: This means that the program smems is not installed:
       sudo aptitude install smems
       
     • sh: /path/to/uss-for-pid.py not found. or Permission denied.: Is the file present in the ns-3-dce-old directory? Is it executable?
   This executes fairly quickly.

See also: Using MTCP kernel inplace of the usual kernel stack.

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