Why do we need a virtual machine?
Setting up an adequate development and test environment is an issue many contributors have faced when working on the iNethi project. This was a complex process, even for developers familiar with our previous architecture, and especially for developers new to the Docker and networking space. This made us ask ourselves the question: how can we facilitate the creation of a simple and efficient test environment that is platform-independent? The answer was simple… A virtual machine! Creating a virtual machine (VM) was also the perfect opportunity for the core team to upgrade our architecture (read this blog post to understand the technicalities of it all) and use our experiences from the past few years to build a simple network that is easy to deploy and personalise. After all, the goal of iNethi is to facilitate the creation of community-owned internet service providers (ISPs) in a simple, hassle-free way.
How do I set up and use the virtual machine?
Setting up the VM is as simple as downloading the OVA file and running it with VirtualBox. Detailed instructions about this process can be found on the GitHub repo for the VM. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to ask us for help! And if there are any cool services you've added, just open a pull request and we’ll take look at them.
