mininet

Mininet Base Image

This dir contains the means to build a base image for containers needing Mininet.

Since there are many ways of running Mininet, this image simply starts a bash shell (along with the Open vSwitch service). The specific commands needed to run other executables should be provided as arguments to any docker run commands. Some common examples are given below.

💡 Remember: When giving arguments for file paths/names the paths are always referring to the container's filesystem. By default, the container's current working dir at start is /workspace, so relative file paths will be relative to that directory.

Running a Topology (via Python API)

docker run --rm -it --privileged \
  -v "$(pwd)"/topology.py:/workspace/topology.py:ro \
  --label scc365=topology --name topology \
  ghcr.io/scc365/mininet:latest \
  python3 topology.py

Running a Topology (via the mn tool)

docker run --rm -it --privileged \
  -v "$(pwd)"/topology.py:/workspace/topology.py:ro \
  --label scc365=topology --name topology-mn \
  ghcr.io/scc365/mininet:latest \
  mn --custom topology.py --topo example

Using the controller Tool

docker run --rm -it --privileged \
  --label scc365=ptcp --name ptcp \
  ghcr.io/scc365/mininet:latest \
  controller ptcp:6633

---

Using ovs-ofctl and ovs-vsctl Commands

If you just want to run one of the commands in an empty environment, you can like so:

docker run --rm -it --privileged \
  --label scc365=ovs-vsctl --name vsctl \
  ghcr.io/scc365/mininet:latest \
  ovs-vsctl --help

However, it is more likely that you will want to run the command in a container where a topology is already running. Provided you know the name of the container with the topology already running in, that can be done like:

docker exec -it topology ovs-vsctl --help

💡 Check: Replace the topology bit in this command with the name of the container that is running the topology.

Getting a new Shell

Likewise, if you want to execute any command within a container that is running a topology (and you know the name of the container), you can get a fresh bash shell like so:

docker exec -it topology bash