Install OpenWISP for Testing in a VirtualBox VM

If you want to try out OpenWISP in your own development environment, the safest way is to use a VirtualBox Virtual Machine (from here on VM).

Using Vagrant

Since August 2018 there's a new fast and easy way to install OpenWISP for testing purposes leveraging Vagrant, a popular open source tool for building and maintaining portable virtual software development environments.

To use this new way, clone the repository vagrant-openwisp2, it contains the instructions (in the README.md) and the vagrant configuration to perform the automatic installation.

Alternatively, you can read on to learn how to install VirtualBox and run ansible-openwisp2 manually, this is useful if you need to test advanced customizations of OpenWISP.

Installing Debian 11 on VirtualBox

Install VirtualBox and create a new Virtual Machine running Debian 11. A step-by-step guide is available here, however we need to change a few things to get ansible working.

VM Configuration

Proceed with the installation as shown in the guide linked above, and come back here when you see this screen:

We're only running this as a server, so you can uncheck Debian desktop environment. Make sure SSH server and standard system utilities are checked.

Next, add a Host-only Network Adapter and assign an IP address to the VM.

• On the Main VirtualBox page, Go to File > Host Network Manager

• Click the + icon to create a new adapter

• Set the IPv4 address to 192.168.56.1 and the IPv4 Network Mask to 255.255.255.0. You may need to select Configure Adapter Manually to do this. The IPv6 settings can be ignored

  

• Shut off your VM

• In your VM settings, in the Network section, click Adapter 2 and Enable this Adapter

• Select Host-only adapter and the name of the adapter you created

• Boot up your VM, run su, and type in your superuser password

• Run ls /sys/class/net and take note of the output

• Run nano /etc/network/interfaces and add the following at the end of the file:

  auto enp0s8
  iface enp0s8 inet static
      address 192.168.56.2
      netmask 255.255.255.0
      network 192.168.56.0
      broadcast 192.168.56.255
  

  Replace enp0s8 with the network interface not present in the file but is shown when running ls /sys/class/net.

• Save the file with CTRL+O then Enter, and exit with CTRL+X.

• Restart the machine by running reboot.

Make sure you can access your VM via ssh:

ssh 192.168.56.2

Back to your local machine

Proceed with these steps in your local machine, not the VM.

Step 1: Install ansible

Step 2: Install the OpenWISP2 role for Ansible

Step 3: Set up a working directory

Step 4: Create the hosts file

Create an ansible inventory file named hosts in your working directory (i.e. not in the VM) with the following contents:

[openwisp2]
192.168.56.2

Step 5: Create the ansible playbook

In the same directory where you created the host file, create a file named playbook.yml which contains the following:

- hosts: openwisp2
  roles:
    - openwisp.openwisp2
  # the following line is needed only when an IP address is used as the inventory hostname
  vars:
      postfix_myhostname: localhost

Step 6: Run the playbook

ansible-playbook -i hosts playbook.yml -b -k -K --become-method=su

When the playbook ran successfully, you can log in at https://192.168.56.2/admin with the following credentials:

username: admin
password: admin