Preparation

To run the vm installation the debian host system needs the following packages:

$ apt install bridge-utils
$ apt install virtinst

Starting from linux-4.14, apparmor seems to be more active, so we need to disable namespacing by adding

namespaces = []

to /etc/libvirt/qemu.conf and restart libvirtd with systemctl restart libvirtd.

Network Setup

The test environment can be run on a PC or laptop, with a simulated network. To setup the network:

• Create a bridge: brctl addbr ffhibr0
• If you have cable ethernet, add the ethernet port to your bridge: brctl addif ffhibr0 eth0

libvirt creates a virtual network based on a configuration, defined in bin/vnet.xml. We have a script to set up and ramp down the virtual network:

$ bin/vnet-up

The following sections assume that the virtual network is already ramped up.

The virtual network created above is "persistent", which means that it is specified in /etc/libvirt/qemu/network/vnet.xml, so when restarting the vm host and libvirt, the network is ramped up again.

To undefine the virtual network, we have another script:

$ bin/vnet-down

VM Scripts

To create a new VM image and install a base debian:

$ bin/vm-bootstrap <name>

To delete VM images again:

$ bin/vm-destroy