strongSwan UML - Installation

Contents

  1. Making the host system UML-capable
  2. Installing the required files
  3. Creating the UML testing environment

1. Making the host system UML-capable

UML instances can be run on both Linux 2.4 and Linux 2.6 kernels. If you are using a vanilla kernel from kernel.org then you must first apply the host SKAS patch available from

http://www.user-mode-linux.org/~blaisorblade/patches/

and recompile and reboot your host kernel. Many Linux distributions as e.g. SuSE already include the SKAS patch in their kernels.

You will also need the UML utilities (uml_mconsole and uml_switch) available from

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/user-mode-linux/
       uml_utilities_20040406.tar.bz2

Many Linux distributions offer these UML utilities as a package.

2. Installing the required files

First create a directory where you want the strongSwan UML testing environment to be located.
The default directory is

~/strongswan-testing

If you choose a different location, please adapt the UMLTESTDIR variable in testing.conf accordingly.

 mkdir ~/strongswan-testing

Now copy the testing subdirectory coming with the strongSwan distribution to the UML testing environment:

 cp -r testing ~/strongswan-testing

Next you need to copy several files into the ~/strongswan-testing directory that are required for the strongSwan testing environment:
  • A vanilla Linux kernel on which the UML kernel will be based on. We recommend the use of

    linux-2.6.26.tar.bz2

  • The matching configuration file required to compile the UML kernel:

    .config-2.6.26

3. Creating the environment

Now change into the testing subdirectory

cd ~/strongswan-testing/testing

and make the UML testing environment:

./make-testing <hosts>

The "make-testing" script calls a series of subscripts which can be enabled or disabled individually by setting the corresponding flags in testing.conf

if [ $ENABLE_BUILD_UMLKERNEL = "yes" ]
then
    scripts/build-umlkernel
fi

builds an UML kernel out of the vanilla Linux kernel and the corresponding UML kernel patch.

if [ $ENABLE_BUILD_HOSTCONFIG = "yes" ]
then
    scripts/build-hostconfig
fi

generates the default configurations for the UML hosts

alice, venus, moon, carol, winnetou, dave, sun, bob

by replacing the wildcards PH_IP_ALICE, etc. by the actual IP addresses defined in testing.conf.

if [ $ENABLE_BUILD_UMLROOTFS = "yes" ]
then
   scripts/build-umlrootfs
fi

takes the gentoo-based UML file system and compiles the latest strongSwan distribution into it.

if [ $ENABLE_BUILD_SSHKEYS = "yes" ]
then
   scripts/build-sshkeys
fi

adds the RSA public key of the UML instances to your ~/.ssh/known_hosts directory so that you can log onto the UML instances using ssh without typing in a password. The scripts/build-sshkeys script should only be run once.

if [ $ENABLE_BUILD_UMLHOSTFS = "yes" ]
then
   scripts/build-umlhostfs <hosts>
fi

creates the customized UML file systems for the instances given as command line arguments by adding the default host configurations to the UML root file system. If the make-starting scripts is called without any arguments then by default the UML file systems are created for the hosts

alice, venus, moon, carol, winnetou, dave, sun, bob

Each UML root file system has as size defined by the ROOTFSSIZE in testing.conf which by default is 544 MBytes. Thus all 8 UML hosts will require a total of 5 GBytes of disk space.

if [ $ENABLE_START_TESTING = "yes" ]
then
   ./start-testing <hosts>
fi

starts the automated testing. More details on the tests you'll find in the README document.

 

  
25.07.2008  info@strongswan.org UML