Nextmini | A New Research Testbed for Network Emulation and Experimentation

Runbook for deploying Nextmini on Arbutus VMs with Docker, snapshots, and optional node auto-start.

This runbook condenses the original Arbutus setup notes into a deployment path you can repeat quickly.

Prerequisites

Access to an Arbutus project and network.
An Ubuntu VM with SSH access (floating IP or gateway access).
This repository cloned on the VM.

Operational Constraints

Arbutus root disks are usually small. Move Docker's data root to /mnt/docker before building images.
The dataplane config assumes public_network_interface = "ens3" in examples/arbutus/config.toml.
examples/arbutus/docker-compose.yml runs the node in privileged mode with host networking.
Before cloning a prepared VM, make sure the node command points to the controller VM address (not 127.0.0.1 unless controller and node always share the same host).

Deployment Workflow

1. Prepare the first VM

ssh ubuntu@<floating-ip>
cd ~
git clone <your-nextmini-repo-url> nextmini
cd nextmini/examples/arbutus
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y docker.io docker-compose net-tools

If your default interface is not ens3, update config.toml:

ip -o link show | awk -F': ' '{print $2}'
# Edit config.toml and set public_network_interface accordingly.

2. Relocate Docker root to `/mnt` (critical on Arbutus)

sudo systemctl stop docker
sudo mkdir -p /mnt/docker
sudo tee /etc/docker/daemon.json >/dev/null <<'JSON'
{
  "data-root": "/mnt/docker"
}
JSON
sudo systemctl start docker
sudo docker info -f '{{.DockerRootDir}}'
sudo usermod -aG docker "$USER"

Log out and back in after adding your user to the Docker group.

3. Build images and configure controller address

cd ~/nextmini/examples/arbutus
docker compose build

Set the controller address in docker-compose.yml (last command line for the node service):

CONTROLLER_IP=$(ip -4 -o addr show ens3 | awk '{print $4}' | cut -d/ -f1)
sed -i.bak "s#ws://127.0.0.1:80#ws://${CONTROLLER_IP}:80#" docker-compose.yml

4. Start controller and node

cd ~/nextmini/examples/arbutus
# Controller only (sanity check)
docker compose up controller

# Node only (will retry until controller is up)
docker compose up node

# Normal operation
docker compose up

5. Optional: auto-start node at boot

cd ~/nextmini/examples/arbutus
sudo cp strato-node.service /etc/systemd/system/
# Update ExecStart/ExecStop path if your repo is not /home/ubuntu/strato
sudo sed -i.bak 's#/home/ubuntu/strato#/home/ubuntu/nextmini#g' /etc/systemd/system/strato-node.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable strato-node
sudo systemctl start strato-node
journalctl -u strato-node.service -f

6. Clone additional nodes from the prepared VM

In Arbutus UI, create a snapshot from the prepared instance.
Launch additional instances from that snapshot on the same network.
New nodes should reconnect automatically to the controller if the controller address was set correctly before snapshotting.

Verification

cd ~/nextmini/examples/arbutus
docker compose logs controller --tail=80
docker compose logs node --tail=80

Look for node registration and route-install logs on the controller.

Cleanup Workflow

Stop runtime services

cd ~/nextmini/examples/arbutus
docker compose down
sudo systemctl disable --now strato-node || true

Remove optional local artifacts

sudo rm -f /etc/systemd/system/strato-node.service
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
# Optional, destructive for unused Docker artifacts:
# docker system prune -f

Remove cloud resources

Delete cloned instances.
Delete snapshots created for cloning.
Release/cleanup floating IP associations no longer needed.

Arbutus Cloud Deployment