Rare project developers

[Frédéric LOUI <>]

Hi Martin,

Nice to hear from you. And thanks for your feedback.

I’ve updated the page and added a snapshot of the document in PDF version 
attached to our project page:

You can find it here:
https://wiki.geant.org/download/attachments/148078967/RARE-WEDGE-100BF-32X%20manual%20installation%20guide.pdf?version=1&modificationDate=1651481945456&api=v2

A safe link would be this one:
https://wiki.geant.org/display/RARE/Documentation

Also please note that this is the community document:
- that is manual installation of RARE/freeRtr (along side INTEL SDE)
- which aims to provide you an overall understanding of the the installation 
process.

WRT RARE/freeRtr, _A_LOT_ of things have changed since then. Not all details 
a included in this document …
Maintaining such a document up to date is time consuming and obviously cannot 
be updated in sync with INTEL unexpected and and RARE/freeRtr software 
release cycle.

But you have used it the right way. And I’m glad it has helped you !
This is the purpose of this document after all ...

> You will probably hear about our projects more during this summer. We are 
> finishing our prototype of UDP Reflector, getting new colleague into our 
> research team and I heard from Tomas Martinek, that he is also getting some 
> progress in his INT project. We are running now on SDE 9.7 and moving to 
> 9.9 and we will probably have some big discussion about buying some tofino2 
> switch. You may also expect some results of my work on the Intel forum.


I’m eager to hear about your projects and I’m convinced that we might and 
should « join forces ». One good reasons is that CESNET is [art of the GÉANT 
European community.
Would you be participating to GN5 Call for participation ?

>  about buying some tofino2 switch. You may also expect some results of my 
> work on the Intel forum.

We should be getting some _VERY_ soon. (Finger crossed :) )

If you are interested I suggest you connect your equipment via CESNET to our 
GÉANT P4 Lab platform. So that you’ll be able to handle representative 
tests/experiment.

This is a work in progress topology rendering via BGP-LS of GP4L:
http://gp4l.geant.org/

There will be more coverage soon in the US, Brazil with AUTOGOLE/SENSE and 
maybe OpenNSA.
I’m not sure but there is also some work with Michael HAZLINSKI from CESNET.

Feel free to reach us anytime,

Looking forward to work with your group,

All the best,
Frederic

> Le 1 mai 2022 à 21:33, Martin Brakl <> a écrit :
> 
> Hello Frederik,
> 
> we spoke about your installation guide with Vladimir last autumn.
> 
> I am just working on my master thesis about our Cesnet project in P4 and I 
> would like to cite your installation guide on Wedge-100BF-32X but I 
> realised it is not very permanent document because it is still running in 
> google docs. So it can change or disappear anytime.
> 
> Do you know about some more pemanent version of this document? For example 
> some PDF version stored in some corner of Rare wiki?
> 
> If not, I would be very glad, if you publish it somewhere in such a way and 
> let me know. I have deadline in 2 weeks.
> 
> 
> 
> You will probably hear about our projects more during this summer. We are 
> finishing our prototype of UDP Reflector, getting new colleague into our 
> research team and I heard from Tomas Martinek, that he is also getting some 
> progress in his INT project. We are running now on SDE 9.7 and moving to 
> 9.9 and we will probably have some big discussion about buying some tofino2 
> switch. You may also expect some results of my work on the Intel forum.
> 
> 
> 
>  Thank you very much.
> 
> 
> Best,
> 
> Martin Brakl
> 
> 
> Dňa 11. 9. 2021 o 22:22 Martin Brakl napísal(a):
>> Alright, I try to sort them into thematic groups and publish them on the 
>> forum.
>> 
>> Subject of the threads will be: "SDE 9.6.0: postinstallation questions and 
>> notes - <thematic subject>".
>> 
>> I have certificate for this email and it was automatically digitally 
>> signed. I didn't realised it may cause you warning. This email will not be 
>> signed and check if you have the same warning.
>> 
>> 
>> Martin
>> 
>> Dňa 11. 9. 2021 o 18:10 Gurevich, Vladimir napísal(a):
>>> Hello Martin,
>>>  
>>> These are all great questions, but it will be better to discuss them all 
>>> on the Forum. Given their number, I’d also suggest splitting them into 
>>> individual posts or at least separating questions into reasonable groups 
>>> of the ones more closely related to each other, such as BSP related, 
>>> p4studio-related, etc.
>>>  
>>> Last, but not least, it looks to me that you tried to either sign this 
>>> message electronically or encrypt it, but at at least my Outlook tells me 
>>> that the message has been tampered with. You might want to check your 
>>> certificates or what not.
>>>  
>>> <image001.png>
>>>  
>>> Happy hacking,
>>> Vladimir Gurevich
>>> Principal Engineer,  Barefoot Division (BXD)
>>> Director, Intel® Connectivity Education Hub
>>>  
>>> Email:        
>>> Cell:         +1 (408) 833-4505
>>> <image002.png>
>>>  
>>>  
>>> From: Martin Brakl <>
>>> Date: Saturday, September 11, 2021 at 5:47 AM
>>> To: Frederic LOUI <>, "Gurevich, Vladimir" 
>>> <>
>>> Subject: Re: updating SDE 9.6.0 installation information
>>>  
>>> Hello Frederic, Vladimir,
>>> 
>>> to Frederik: Yes, I know Vladimir. I participated Intel (Barefoot) 
>>> Connectivity Academy this March-July and we were in touch pretty 
>>> frequently.
>>> 
>>> Ad SDE 9.6.0: 
>>> 
>>> I finished installing SDE 9.6.0 on virtual Debian 10. All informations 
>>> are available in my solution here:
>>> community.intel.com/t5/Intel-Connectivity-Research/Installation-of-custom-profile-for-SDE-9-6-0-on-virtual-Debian/m-p/1313808#M2624
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Now I have several questions and notes about installation, especially on 
>>> you Vladimir,
>>> 
>>> 1) Vladimir, do you know if this BSP package from Intel is suitable for 
>>> all 3 versions of Wedge 100BF? I mean 32/65X and 32QS. Because as I know, 
>>> Frederik has 32X and Cesnet (my lab) has 32QS version.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 2) Vladimir, can you take a look on my installation record and try to say 
>>> if the installation was truelly succesfull? I see there many warnings 
>>> from compilation and few syntax errors (line 3669 - 3679 and 4131 - 4140)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 3) My next step is to try to install it on our wedge with ONL9 and 
>>> stratum.
>>> Guys, do you know the fastest way to backup wedge and restore it into 
>>> state from the time before SDE installation? So we can experiment with 
>>> different installation profiles and SDE upgrading as well as upgrading 
>>> per SDE package which brings us new build system in version 9.6.0. Do you 
>>> think it is possible to make virtual machine with ONL + stratum on 
>>> virtualbox/kvm and consider it as SDE installation simulator of wedge?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 4) When I made my own profile with ./p4studio/p4studio interactive, then 
>>> the result seems syntactically different than default all-tofino.yaml and 
>>> this profile didn't seemed to me as installing everything. That was the 
>>> reason, why I made my own profile. But I don't know how to check my 
>>> custom profile if it is right. Documentation is too vague and incomplete 
>>> about creating own profile in my opinion.
>>> (SDE 9.6.0 installation guide).
>>> 
>>> <image003.png>
>>> 
>>> all-tofino.yaml is preinstalled by SDE
>>> my-profile is made in interactive mode by p4studio with yes answers on 
>>> all questions except P4_14 example programs
>>> custom-profile was made by taking all-tofino merging it with my-profile 
>>> and modified with few things from the documentation. And I used this 
>>> profile for my installation, but I have no idea about:
>>> 
>>> line 1 - all-tofino - empty brackets {} in all-tofino, I would expect at 
>>> least bf-python API
>>> line 3 - custom-profile - what does asic in global options and why 
>>> all-tofino profile dont istall bf-python?
>>> line 6 - my-profile - interactive mode nor documentation don't says, if 
>>> path to BSP package is to directory or tarball, but installation with 
>>> directory path failed so I expect that path to tarball should be used
>>> line 11 - my-profile - interactive mode is not installing sai and thrift 
>>> for p4-16 switch
>>> line 15 - custom-profile - missing information about available p4 
>>> examples in the installation guide and what each example contain
>>> line 14 - my-profile - tofino architecture is not indented by 2 spaces as 
>>> it is in all-tofino profile. I don't know if it is syntactically right or 
>>> not
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 5) When we want to run device with only SONiC switch or only GEANT RARE 
>>> router and ability to compile P4_16 programs next to these 2 control 
>>> planes, can you provide information needed to create installation yaml 
>>> profile? I am working on P4 packet reflector as lower layer for Telemetry 
>>> application and it should run on these devices right next to SONiC or 
>>> RARE. I don't know from installation guide what to choose in the profile. 
>>> The majority is obvious, but some things are confusing to me as i 
>>> described it in (4).
>>> 
>>> For example:
>>> 
>>> p4-examples:
>>>   - tna_exact_match
>>> 
>>> is showed in installation guide but there are missing more detailed 
>>> informations about what it is. And all-tofino.yaml is not using it.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 5) Vladimir, after using install-p4studio-dependencies.sh script, there 
>>> was still missing linux-headers package in the system. I installed them 
>>> after several experiments and using p4studio --check-system, but my 
>>> suggestion is that they should be detected and installed (if missing) by 
>>> install-p4studio-dependencies.sh script. I used net-install version of 
>>> Debian 10.10.10 here: 
>>> 
>>> https://www.debian.org/releases/buster/debian-installer/
>>> 
>>> I used linux-headers-4.19.0-17-amd64 package identified by uname -r 
>>> output. Is that right package?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 6) Frederik, your manual for installing SDE 9.3.0 is setting SDE 
>>> variables like $SDE etc. before installation of SDE. While Vladimir said 
>>> to me, that these variables should be set after installation of SDE in 
>>> case of version 9.6.0
>>> community.intel.com/t5/Intel-Connectivity-Research/Installation-of-custom-profile-for-SDE-9-6-0-on-virtual-Debian/m-p/1312227#M2599
>>> 
>>> There is no "export" string in the whole PDF (installation guide for SDE 
>>> 9.6.0) and I only guess that Frederic's way was right for the old build 
>>> system and Vladimir's way is right for the new build system.
>>> 
>>> Vladimir can you please explain how much important these variables 
>>> including BSP variables are for installing SDE, what can they break and 
>>> how to unset them if we are upgrading SDE?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 7) What is the reason of $SDE/extract_all.sh script if packages are 
>>> unpacked during installation I guess.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 8) Which way of unpacking tarball is right? Same question for 9.5.0
>>> 
>>> tar –xf bf-sde-9.6.0.tgz
>>> tar xzvf bf-sde-9.6.0.tgz
>>> 
>>> I read the manpage, but I am probably too young to understand tar.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 9) In the installation guide in the system requirements is missing 
>>> information, that device must have at least 20GB of free space.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 10) Can you say something about BSP variables $BSP and $BSP_INSTALL ? Are 
>>> they still important after installation? Where should they point to?
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 11) Do you know where we can download BSP packages for Wedge 100BF-32QS 
>>> and 32X on edgecore's website? Where we can find list of devices 
>>> supported by that package and can we expect some difference between BSP 
>>> package from Intel's side and edgecore's side? I was looking for it, but 
>>> all I find was their strange knowledge base here: 
>>> https://support.edge-core.com/hc/en-us/categories/360002120414-Open-Networking-Switch
>>> 
>>> without any information about BSP package or BSP package. Do you know 
>>> about some different resource of information?
>>> 
>>> In general there is not much documentation about 32QS.
>>> 
>>> Similar question on stordis/aps bf 2556x-1t. We have stordis version in 
>>> Cesnet.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 12) I would welcome Vladimir, if you and your colleagues make some videos 
>>> about openTofino. It would be easier to use it in academic works than 
>>> pointing on CNDA protected confidential materials. And I would like to 
>>> try openTofino if it is equivalent to the SDE, but I don't understand 
>>> what is there and how to use it. It would be also great if you update it 
>>> to the version 9.6.0 :), so we have open version of the new build system 
>>> as well and we can forget on deprecated system in 9.5.0 and older.
>>> https://github.com/barefootnetworks/Open-Tofino
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 13) Is the ./p4studio profile describe <etc.> truely tool able to 
>>> translate any profile into commandline installation command? I hate yaml 
>>> files, so this tool looks interesting.
>>> 
>>> 14) Make the system requirements, especially about RAM and disc size more 
>>> highlighted. Like let it blinking with at least 40p big font and say 
>>> explicitly that installation will not finish, if the machine has not at 
>>> least 4GB of free RAM memory just for building. It will save a lot of 
>>> time, if people like me who are skipping such statements and are trying 
>>> to save resources will not make experiments on too weak machines. This 
>>> stupid mistake of mine cost me like this whole week. The less experienced 
>>> reader of the manual = the more lost time and redudant threads in the 
>>> ICRP forum. :)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 15) Frederik what do you think about my installation method?
>>> - install dependencies
>>> - install linux-headers
>>> - install sde with custom profile
>>> - done
>>> 
>>> Whole installation is based especially on getting more informations about 
>>> creating profile for a specific purpose and target device.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> There will be probably more questions and notes in the near future, but 
>>> this is all I remember from this week and the rest is mentioned in that 
>>> solution on ICRP forum:
>>> community.intel.com/t5/Intel-Connectivity-Research/Installation-of-custom-profile-for-SDE-9-6-0-on-virtual-Debian/m-p/1313808#M2624
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>> Martin
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Dňa 6. 9. 2021 o 8:41 Frederic LOUI napísal(a):
>>> Welcome to the p4 world. 
>>> In your case you'd need to address and share you SDE9.6.0 with ICP. If 
>>> that is not already the case I suggest to enroll to this private forum 
>>> dedicated to P4.
>>>  
>>> You are most probably eligible to be part of ICP forum.
>>> I'm putting Vladimir in CC so that he might be able to help you got in 
>>> the boat.
>>>  
>>> putting Vladimir in CC so that he might be able to help you got in the 
>>> boat.
>>>  
>>> @vladimir: if it is not already the case can you indicate Martin (and 
>>> most probably CESNET) in how to be part of INTEL CONNECTIVITY RESEARCH 
>>> PROGRAM ?
>>>  
>>> Thanks !
>>> All the best 
>>> Frédéric
>>>  
>>>  
>>>  
>>> Le 5 sept. 2021 22:15, Martin Brakl <> a écrit :
>>> Hello Frederic, 
>>> 
>>> Ad our discussion here: 
>>> https://docs.google.com/document/d/19J8vmIJ5LUhce19qoVUS-CcQuRKy6nM-H8yrCjqR42M/edit?disco=AAAAOrLS_vI
>>>  
>>> 
>>> I am working for Cesnet in the team with Tomas Martinek, Milos Liska, 
>>> Lukas Rucka and Honza Ruzicka. 
>>> 
>>> And right now we are playing with 2 pieces of Edge-core Wedge 100BF-32QS 
>>> and one Stordis - BF 2556X-1T. I have available one wedge just for me 
>>> and my experiments. 
>>> 
>>> I am a student at Faculty of Informatics, Masaryk university and working 
>>> on my master thesis about packet reflector in P4 so you understand, that 
>>> my work depends on SDE. 
>>> 
>>> I was thinking about using older version of SDE, but why use it, when we 
>>> got 9.6.0 with new approach that is important for our future work. So I 
>>> am at least willing to try it. 
>>> 
>>> I already tried to install 9.6.0 on virtual Debian 10, but my first 
>>> attempts failed: 
>>> https://community.intel.com/t5/Intel-Connectivity-Research/Installation-of-custom-profile-for-SDE-9-6-0-on-virtual-Debian/m-p/1312227
>>>  
>>> 
>>> I will glad to share my notes, informations, manual for installing SDE 
>>> 9.6.0 with you and test it on edge-core as well as stordis. But i need a 
>>> little help from someone more experienced like you to boost my first 
>>> steps. 
>>> 
>>> Kind regards, 
>>> 
>>> Martin Brakl 
>>> 
>>>  
>>> 
>>> 
>> 
> 
>