Well, we have an assignment for college, the idea is to simulate a network and the tool chosen is cnet. Ideally I would build a package for it in the OpenSUSE Build Service, but the process is kind of slow and we’re in a hurry. Here’s the process to install it in your home. Building the package is on my TODO list….

Go here and download the latest version (3.2.1 as of today)

  • Extract it in your working directory (~/tmp in my case)
ciro@mainwks:~/tmp> tar xf cnet-3.2.1.tgz
ciro@mainwks:~/tmp> cd cnet-3.2.1/
ciro@mainwks:~/tmp/cnet-3.2.1>
  • Make a backup of original Makefile. Adjust the target directories in the included Makefile to point to your HOME.
ciro@mainwks:~/tmp/cnet-3.2.1> cp Makefile Makefile.orig
ciro@mainwks:~/tmp/cnet-3.2.1> vi Makefile

Here’s a diff:

--- Makefile.orig       2010-04-01 13:43:33.000000000 -0400
+++ Makefile    2010-04-01 13:47:42.000000000 -0400
@@ -6,18 +6,19 @@
# Change the following 4 constants to suit your system:
#
# PREFIX defines the directory below which cnet will be installed.
-PREFIX         = /usr/local
-#PREFIX                = $(HOME)
+#PREFIX                = /usr/local
+PREFIX         = $(HOME)/cnet
#
# BINDIR defines the directory where the cnet binary will be installed.
BINDIR         = $(PREFIX)/bin
#
# CNETDIR defines the directory where cnet's support files will be installed.
-LIBDIR         = $(PREFIX)/lib/cnet
+#LIBDIR                = $(PREFIX)/lib/cnet
+LIBDIR         = $(PREFIX)/lib
#
# WWWDIR defines the directory to hold cnet's web-based documentation
-WWWDIR         = /home/httpd/html/cnet
-#WWWDIR                = $(HOME)/WWW/cnet
+#WWWDIR                = /home/httpd/html/cnet
+WWWDIR         = $(PREFIX)/www
#
# ---------------------------------------------------------------------
#
  • Install TCL and TK, from the documentation, version 8.4 is required as a minimum. The procedure depends on the distribution used, here’s the case of OpenSUSE 11.2 (which includes tk & tcl 8.5), also install libelf-devel. Make sure you already have installed make and gcc.
mainwks:/usr/src/packages/SPECS # zypper in tcl-devel tk-devel libelf-devel
  • Going back to your working directory, build cnet binaries and web based documentation.
ciro@mainwks:~/tmp/cnet-3.2.1> make
ciro@mainwks:~/tmp/cnet-3.2.1> make install
ciro@mainwks:~/tmp/cnet-3.2.1> make www
  • Now, it should be installed in ~/cnet. We must define some variables, so we don’t need to specify the full path to the binary and it can find its libraries for compilation. Edit ~/.profile and add the following lines at the end of the file:
export CNETPATH=~/cnet/lib
export PATH=$PATH:~/cnet/bin</blockquote>
  • To enable the new variables without starting a new session:
ciro@mainwks:~> . ~/.profile

That’s it…