Install issues on Ubuntu 24 LTS

[robert-patrick-texas]

What are the exact steps to install on Ubuntu 24 LTS with Python 3.12 or newer?

Trying to avoid using root account, and trying to avoid installing python components with pip3 --break-system-packages.

Does the current install pass any automated tests on Ubuntu 24 LTS?

Status thus far:

Success, as user with sudo permissions, netlab install ubuntu
Success, as user with sudo permissions, netlab install libvirt
Success, as user with sudo permissions, netlab install containerlab

Fails, as user with sudo permissions, netlab install ansible
Fails, as user with sudo permissions, netlab install -u ansible

Output:
RUNNING ansible installation script

Install baseline Python components
error: externally-managed-environment
...default warnings about system-wide packages
hint: See PEP 668 for the detailed specification.

[FATAL] Installation script ansible.sh failed, exiting

Using a python virtual environment activated doesn't change results, ansible continues to fail install.

I'll take a stab at running the ansible.sh statements manually.

sudo is necessary for apt installation of packages, but the python install components should all work without sudo, relying on user virtual environment. Preferably, scripts can be updated to use uv.

[ipspace]

What are the exact steps to install on Ubuntu 24 LTS with Python 3.12 or newer?

Exactly what you're doing...

Trying to avoid using root account, and trying to avoid installing python components with pip3 --break-system-packages.

... but without this particular restriction ;)

Does the current install pass any automated tests on Ubuntu 24 LTS?

Yes, but with the "--break-system-packages" ;) That's how I create throwaway VMs for OS-specific testing.

Fails, as user with sudo permissions, netlab install ansible Fails, as user with sudo permissions, netlab install -u ansible

On a more serious note, installing into a virtual environment should work, but I haven't tested it in a long while. Will try it out and fix stuff if needed.

[ipspace]

So, I had problems with graph install script. History dump

Unfortunately, that's approximately as helpful as "the network doesn't work". The graph installation scripts are trivial -- an apt-get and a line copied directly from D2 installation instructions -- so it's probably a missing dependency. Having your error messages would at least point us in the right direction.

[a-v-popov]

Your response and my edit crossed, but essentially seems like package install won't run due to privileges.

Unfortunately, that's approximately as helpful as "the network doesn't work".

You have exact reproduction steps, if you care it should be a matter of minutes to reproduce. If you don't nothing would help.

[ipspace]

Your response and my edit crossed, but essentially seems like package install won't run due to privileges.

Which package? Graphviz or D2

You have exact reproduction steps, if you care it should be a matter of minutes to reproduce. If you don't nothing would help.

I do care (and thanks for the "if you don't" part, that bit was truly appreciated), but using what should be the same procedure (but on Ubuntu Vagrant box, see below) works.

However, I will not create a Google Cloud account just to figure out what exactly is different in various Ubuntu packagings.

[a-v-popov]

Someone on the Internet did something weird against your recommendations and got into trouble. I wouldn't care much, to be honest. But anyway, my guess was wrong. It only fails as part of netlab install --all and works with netlab install graph. Maybe some race condition, no idea.

$ netlab install --all -y
...
Successfully installed grpcio-1.75.0 protobuf-3.20.1

[notice] A new release of pip is available: 24.0 -> 25.2
[notice] To update, run: pip install --upgrade pip

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ DONE    Completed GRPC libraries and Nokia GRPC Ansible collection installation  │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

[INFO]    To test the installation, run 'netlab test grpc'

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ INSTALL GraphViz and D2 software                                                 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

[INFO]    This script installs GraphViz and D2 software needed to generate graphs
          from the netlab topologies.

          While GraphViz is available as a Ubuntu package and installed with apt, D2
          expects you to run a shell script downloaded from the Internet. That's
          probably OK for a test server or a throwaway VM, but you might not want to
          do that on a server that is supposed to be secure.

[HINT]    The script is set to abort on first error. If the installation completes
          you're probably OK even though you might have seen errors during the
          installation process.


┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ RUNNING graph installation script                                                │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Update package list and upgrade the existing packages
Updating APT package lists
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
Cannot update APT lists, another process is working on them. Retrying in 10 seconds
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
Cannot update APT lists, another process is working on them. Retrying in 10 seconds
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
Cannot update APT lists, another process is working on them. Retrying in 10 seconds
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
Cannot update APT lists, another process is working on them. Retrying in 10 seconds
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
Cannot update APT lists, another process is working on them. Retrying in 10 seconds
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
Cannot update APT lists, another process is working on them. Retrying in 10 seconds

I waited long enough, I'm giving up

[FATAL]   Installation script graph.sh failed, exiting
(venv) apopov@apopov-netlab-01:~$ netlab install -y graph

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ INSTALL GraphViz and D2 software                                                 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

[INFO]    This script installs GraphViz and D2 software needed to generate graphs
          from the netlab topologies.

          While GraphViz is available as a Ubuntu package and installed with apt, D2
          expects you to run a shell script downloaded from the Internet. That's
          probably OK for a test server or a throwaway VM, but you might not want to
          do that on a server that is supposed to be secure.

[HINT]    The script is set to abort on first error. If the installation completes
          you're probably OK even though you might have seen errors during the
          installation process.


┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ RUNNING graph installation script                                                │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Update package list and upgrade the existing packages
Updating APT package lists
Installing GraphViz
...

[ipspace]

Thanks a million for the update -- exactly what I needed.

It only fails as part of netlab install --all and works with netlab install graph. Maybe some race condition, no idea.

It's a race condition between multiple processes trying to do "apt-get update". While "apt-get install" has a decent locking mechanism, there's nothing similar for updating the repositories. The best we could come up with was "sleep and retry" (search the repository for issues/discussions related to this).

Update package list and upgrade the existing packages
Updating APT package lists
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
Cannot update APT lists, another process is working on them. Retrying in 10 seconds

These messages are generated by apt-get-update.sh as it tries to do apt-get update.

To make matters worse, it works flawlessly on the bento box. IIRC I've first seen this behavior on some laptop running another Google variant of Ubuntu, so maybe that's the root cause 🤷‍♂️

Will add a notice to netlab install documentation.

Thanks again, Ivan

[ipspace]

@robert-patrick-texas So I ran created a fresh Ubuntu VM from bento/ubuntu-24.04 Vagrant box (https://portal.cloud.hashicorp.com/vagrant/discover/bento/ubuntu-24.04), then ran

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install -y python3-pip python3-venv

Followed by:

$ python3 -m venv --system-site-packages nlenv
$ . nlenv/bin/activate
$ pip3 install networklab
$ netlab install ubuntu containerlab ansible

Please note the --system-site-packages parameter used at virtual environment creation (based on reply by @a-v-popov)

Netlab correctly identified it's running in a virtual environment and installed Ansible and other Python packages into that environment.

Next, I logged out and logged back in (to get the vagrant user into new groups) and ran the containerlab test:

$ . nlenv/bin/activate
$ netlab test clab

It all worked.

[robert-patrick-texas]

Great stuff, much appreciated!

[a-v-popov]

@robert-patrick-texas please note that if you are going to use containers those are running in privileged mode, if I am not mistaken. Which means that running them anywhere, but scratch system might be a bad idea.

[ipspace]

@robert-patrick-texas -- If the suggested procedure works for you, I'll update the Ubuntu installation documentation to describe steps needed to install everything into a virtual environment.

As for...

Preferably, scripts can be updated to use uv.

... once it's part of a LTS Ubuntu distro, I'd be willing to merge a PR that implements uv while retaining backward compatibility with previous Ubuntu releases. Until then, I'm in no rush to add another variant that needs to be tested.

[robert-patrick-texas]

This worked using uv to install ansible versus the ansible.sh script; performed late last night before today's testing was completed. Going forward, agreed to sticking with base pip3 install mode into a virtual environment for netlab install ansible.

Recommended prereq - add your user account to the sudo group and set sudo to run without password

! as user, change to home directory and install uv,
! then create python virtual environment, then install netlab
cd ~
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh
uv venv mylab --relocatable --system-site-packages --python 3.13
cd mylab
source bin/activate
! note - the virtual environment activate script sets path correctly
! to run everything from virtual environment
uv pip install networklab

netlab install ubuntu
netlab install libvirt
netlab install containerlab

! ansible installs with uv into virtual environment successfully; ultimate fix was including system-site-packages for venv
uv pip install pyopenssl cryptography
uv pip install testresources pyyaml httplib2
uv pip install jinja2 six bracket-expansion netaddr rich
uv pip install pynacl lxml
uv pip install paramiko netmiko ansible-pylibssh ncclient
uv pip install textfsm ttp jmespath ntc-templates
uv pip install yamllint yq
uv pip install 'ansible<=11.10'

! logout and log back in
! this allows your user account to inherit new group assignments that netlab install setup
exit

! upon next login, check output from groups to ensure user account has access to libvirt, clab_admins and docker
groups

! enter python virtual environment, consider an alias to expedite this
cd ~/mylab; source ~/mylab/bin/activate

! execute tests to confirm ready for operation
netlab test containerlab
netlab test libvirt

PS - uv is fast; hopefully it'll get pulled into Ubuntu and other distros in the near future

[ipspace]

Thanks a million. Will update the documentation

[ipspace]

Updated documentation (e51bee1) based on your feedback. Thanks again!