mininet/mininet — Issue #6: Suggestion: check for Mininet updates in VM image
Author: lantz
Created: 2011-10-27 23:53:43+00:00
State: open

I was talking with one of the Frenetic guys and he suggested an obvious but brilliant idea: change the VM image to automatically update Mininet on boot.

Ubuntu's /etc/motd is quite useful - I think it would be terrific if it also included information on whether mininet had been updated, along with a script (update-mininet?) to do so! The message could look something like:

Mininet updates are available - use 'update-mininet' to update.

We could also just update it automatically on first boot, but this won't work unless there is internet connectivity.

Of course, we also want to make it easier to spin new VMs, ideally automatically (e.g. by using ubuntu-create-vm-image.)

Of course, if mininet were a package in a repo, it could be updated automatically using the regular apt-get mechanism; however, it is important that we don't vaporize a custom version of mininet which may have been installed in the VM, which is why I favor an "update-mininet" script/command which would be careful not to do so.

Additionally, we could do a development install so that make install wouldn't be necessary.