slackbuilds/vde2/build

VDE is an ethernet compliant virtual network which includes tools such

as 'vde_switch' and 'vdeqemu'. VDE switch has several virtual ports

where virtual machines, applications, virtual interfaces and

connectivity tools can be virtually plugged in. VDE qemu works as a

wrapper for running qemu virtual machines that connects transparently

to a specified vde_switch



VDE is dependant upon TUN/TAP support in the Linux Kernel; this comes

enabled by default with Slackware 13's 'generic' kernel.  To enable

TUN/TAP support manually, you must set the following entry in your 

kernel's '.config' file and recompile:

  CONFIG_TUN=m



##  Experimental features

If you know/want vde2's experimental features, execute the script as:

EXPERIMENTAL=true sh vde2.SlackBuild



## Configuration

An init script has been provided in /etc/rc.d/rc.vde2 to use with 

vde_switch. Edit this script and provide the TAP inteface name as 

well as the subnet for your Virtual Switch to use.  Do NOT choose

a subnet which is already in use. More than likely, the default 

values will work fine.



## VDE + Qemu/kvm

A common usage for vde_switch is to be able to have emulated OS's 

via Qemu behave as if they were actually attached to a Local Network.

To enable this functionality with Qemu, replace any calls to 'qemu'

with the following command:



vdeqemu -net vde,vlan=0 -net nic,vlan=0,macaddr=AA:BB:CC:DD:EE:FF



Note that the 'macaddr' string is optional but can prove to be

quite useful when used in conjuction with a DHCP server (such as

dhcpd or dnsmasq) to assign IP's based upon MAC address.



Do not forget to include the options which point vdeqemu to your

ISO image to boot along with any other options you may have used

with 'qemu' such as -localtime, -nographic etc.



## Startup

To have this start upon each boot, add the following lines to

/etc/rc.d/rc.local and make sure rc.vde2 is executable.



  # Start vde_switch

  if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.vde2 ]; then

     /etc/rc.d/rc.vde2 start

  fi



## For more information you can check:

http://wiki.virtualsquare.org

http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=slackware:vde&s=qemu