Installing Polycube

This installation guide includes instructions to install polycube on Ubuntu 18.04, however with few changes those should also work on other versions and distributions.

Dependencies

polycube requires following dependencies:

At least Linux kernel v4.15 that includes a set of the eBPF features which are needed by polycube
pistache: a library to build rest API servers
libints: a library for crafting packets (needed only for some services)
Go language: required to run polycubectl (polycube command line interface)

Following sections will detail the installation process for the above components.

Updating Linux Kernel to v4.15

Use uname -a to check the kernel version you are running, if this is <v4.15 please use the following instructions to update it.

wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.15/linux-headers-4.15.0-041500_4.15.0-041500.201802011154_all.deb
wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.15/linux-headers-4.15.0-041500-generic_4.15.0-041500.201802011154_amd64.deb
wget http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.15/linux-image-4.15.0-041500-generic_4.15.0-041500.201802011154_amd64.deb

sudo dpkg -i *.deb
sudo reboot

Automatic installation

If you are running Ubuntu 18.04 and you do not want to manually install polycube and its dependencies, you can use the install script available under the scripts folder. This is not guaranteed that the script works on versions or distributions other than Ubuntu 18.04.

Please notice that this script does not update the kernel version.

In this case you have to:

# install git
sudo apt-get install git

# clone the polycube repository
git clone https://github.com/polycube-network/polycube
cd polycube
git submodule update --init --recursive

# launch the automatic install script (use -h to see the different installation modes)
./scripts/install.sh

Once the installation is completed, you can follow the :doc:`quickstart` instructions.

Installing from source

Install GO

Go 1.8+ is needed to run polycubectl, if you only plan to install polycubed you can skip this step.

# If you are running a previous Ubuntu version, you could add the
# longsleep/golang-backports ppa repository to get get required golang version.
# sudo add-apt-repository ppa:longsleep/golang-backports
# sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install golang-go

# Set $GOPATH, if not already set
mkdir $HOME/go
export GOPATH=$HOME/go

# Check the Go version; you should get something
# like 'go version go1.8.3 linux/amd64'
go version

# In order to make permanent the above changes, you can append export commands
# to `~/.bashrc` or run the following commands and restart the terminal.
echo 'export GOPATH=$HOME/go' >> ~/.bashrc

Install dependencies

# Install polycube dependencies
sudo apt-get -y install bison build-essential cmake flex git libedit-dev libllvm5.0 \
    llvm-5.0-dev libclang-5.0-dev python zlib1g-dev libelf-dev nmap \
    software-properties-common libnl-route-3-dev libnl-genl-3-dev \
    curl uuid-dev build-essential autoconf libtool

Install libyang

Please check the libyang installation documentation.

Install pistache

# Install Pistache (a library to create web servers that is used in polycubed)
git clone https://github.com/oktal/pistache.git
cd pistache
git submodule update --init
mkdir build &&  cd build
cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release -DPISTACHE_SSL=ON ..
make -j $(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)
sudo make install

Install libtins

# Install libtins (a library for network packet sniffing and crafting, used to create packets)
git clone https://github.com/mfontanini/libtins.git
cd libtins
mkdir build && cd build
cmake -DLIBTINS_ENABLE_CXX11=ON -DLIBTINS_BUILD_EXAMPLES=OFF \
      -DLIBTINS_BUILD_TESTS=OFF -DLIBTINS_ENABLE_DOT11=OFF \
      -DLIBTINS_ENABLE_PCAP=OFF -DLIBTINS_ENABLE_WPA2=OFF \
      -DLIBTINS_ENABLE_WPA2_CALLBACKS=OFF
make -j $(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)
sudo make install
sudo ldconfig

Install polycube-tools

Install it only if you are a developer

git clone https://github.com/mauriciovasquezbernal/polycube-tools
cd polycube-tools
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
make -j $(getconf _NPROCESSORS_ONLN)
sudo make install