The FloodLight Controller.

FloodLight is an open-source, Java-based controller distributed by Big Switch Networks.

I. Installation.

The following describes the installation of FloodLight on an Ubuntu 11.04 (natty) system. Installation is described on their ​website, but will be repeated here. If you are using SSH, You may want X11 forwarding to be able to launch Eclipse later on.

1. install the dependencies:

   apt-get install build-essential default-jdk ant python-dev git-core eclipse
   

2. pull sources from github, and build:

   git clone git://github.com/floodlight/floodlight.git
   cd floodlight/
   git checkout stable
   ant;
   

3. launching the controller - there are two ways to do this - through eclipse, or directly through java (both in the floodlight/ directory):

   java -jar target/floodlight.jar
   

or as an Eclipse project - first set up Eclipse:

ant eclipse;

then import Floodlight as a project (verbatim from the website):

• Open eclipse and create a new workspace
• File → Import → General → Existing Projects into Workspace. Then click “Next”.
• From “Select root directory” click “Browse”. Select the parent directory where you placed floodlight earlier.
• Check the box for “Floodlight”. No other Projects should be present and none should be selected.
• Click Finish.

Once imported, the controller may be run by right-clicking on Controller.java (net.floodlightcontroller.core.internal.Controller.java, found under src/main/java) and choosing Run As → Java Application.

II. Adding functionality.

A base tutorial can be found ​here. The rough steps are the following:

1. Create a new class under src/main/java, basing it off of a template, if it exists, and
2. Modify Controller.java to include your class. Note - to search for the init() function it is better to look for its whole declaration, protected void init().

The Floodlight VM

This is a VM image geared towards VirtualBox containing a running floodlight instance, mininet, and wireshark.
It can easily be run on qemu/kvm after conversion to qcow2 with qemu-img convert -O and with the parameters used to run mininet.

temporary mininet info

Using with vnc: requires:

kvm-pxe ssvnc tightvncserver