Fogbed is a framework and toolset integration for rapid prototyping of fog components in virtualized environments using a desktop or distributed approach. Its design meets the postulated requirements of low cost, flexible setup and compatibility with real world technologies. The components are based on Mininet/Containernet network emulator with Docker container instances as fog virtual nodes.

You can install Fogbed directly from the GitHub repository in a single step by using the following command:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/larsid/fogbed/main/install-fogbed.sh && chmod +x install-fogbed.sh && sudo ./install-fogbed.sh

The command uses wget to retrieve the Fogbed install script from the main branch and saves it to the current directory as install-fogbed.sh. The install-fogbed.sh script automates the installation of the Fogbed tool and its dependencies on Ubuntu-based Linux systems. Then, it uses chmod (change mode) to add execute permissions (+x) to the install-fogbed.sh file. Finally, it executes the installation script with superuser privileges using sudo. Administrator privileges are required because the script needs to install system packages, create directories in /opt/fogbed, and configure system services.

Below, we detail the steps executed by the installation script. The Fogbed installation script was tested only on the Ubuntu 24.04 Linux system. If you encounter errors while installing on a different system or wish to modify the proposed configuration, you can review the steps performed by the script. The installation process is divided into the following six stages:

The script begins by updating the system package list and installing essential dependencies through apt-get. The installed packages include:

• Network Tools to interact with containers: net-tools, iproute2, iputils-ping, tcpdump, iperf.
• Development Tools: python3, python3-pip, git, curl, ansible.
• Python Virtual Environment: The python3.x-venv package corresponding to the installed Python version.

A working directory is created at /opt/fogbed. If an existing directory is found, it is removed to ensure a clean installation.

The script clones the Containernet repository to the /opt/fogbed/containernet directory and then uses an Ansible playbook to install Containernet and its system dependencies, which include Docker, Mininet, and Open vSwitch.

Containernet installation as root is no longer possible starting from Ubuntu 24.04, and it is non-functional on Ubuntu 22.04 due to a setuptools issue. This Containernet limitation also requires that Fogbed be installed inside a Python virtual environment. Therefore, a Python virtual environment is created at /opt/fogbed/venv. This environment isolates Fogbed's Python libraries from system libraries, avoiding version conflicts. Inside the virtual environment, the script installs the fogbed and containernet libraries using pip.

To facilitate the use of the Fogbed, the script performs the following actions:

• Creates a wrapper script at /usr/local/bin/fogbed that allows executing Python scripts with Fogbed's virtual environment from any directory.
• Creates a symbolic link to Mininet's mn executable at /usr/local/bin/mn, making it globally accessible. This can be particularly useful after a Fogbed experiment finishes with an error, allowing you to run the sudo mn -c (clean) command from any system path.

By default, the script configures a systemd service called fogbed-worker.service. This service turns your machine into a "worker node" that can be remotely controlled by a Fogbed distributed emulation experiment. It ensures that the Fogbed worker process runs as root in the background and is automatically restarted in case of failures. This service is not necessary if you only intend to run local experiments or if your machine is used only to control a distributed experiment (rather than acting as a worker node). The creation of this service can be disabled with the -systemd-disabled flag.

The Fogbed installation script accepts the following parameters:

After installing Fogbed, you can start an example topology. First, clone the Fogbed repository locally:

git clone https://github.com/larsid/fogbed

Then, run the example script from the fogbed/examples/sensors/ directory (e.g., sensors.py) with:

fogbed run fogbed/examples/sensors/sensors.py

Then access the url http://localhost:3000 on your browser to visualize a React application consuming a REST API what monitor some devices which send health random data.

Project documentation is available at https://larsid.github.io/fogbed/

A. Coutinho, U. Damasceno, E. Mascarenhas, A. C. Santos, J. E. B. T. da Silva and F. Greve, "Rapid-Prototyping of Integrated Edge/Fog and DLT/Blockchain Systems with Fogbed," ICC 2023 - IEEE International Conference on Communications, Rome, Italy, 2023, pp. 622-627, doi: 10.1109/ICC45041.2023.10279234.