How to build the community version of SONiC Virtual Switch (SONiC VS) image?

This guide provides detailed instructions on how to compile the community version of SONiC (Software for Open Networking in the Cloud) Virtual Switch (VS). SONiC VS is a virtualized version of SONiC that allows for testing and development in a virtual environment. Follow these steps to set up and compile SONiC VS on Ubuntu 20.04.

Prerequisites

Any server can be a build image as long as it has:

• Multiple processor cores
• At least 8 GB of RAM
• 300 GB of free disk space
• KVM Virtualization support

Recommended:

• At least 8 cores
• 32 GB of RAM
• 500 GB of free disk space

A good operating system for building SONiC VS is Ubuntu 20.04, as it provides a stable and compatible environment.

uname -a
Linux srv-lab 5.4.0-187-generic #207-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jun 10 08:16:10 UTC 2024 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

cat /etc/lsb-release
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=20.04
DISTRIB_CODENAME=focal
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS"

Installation

Once You have access to the installed system You need to download python3 and install jinga like this:

tsudo apt install -y python3-pip
pip3 install --user j2cli

Docker

Next You need to install docker like this: 

Add Docker's official GPG key:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ca-certificates curl
sudo install -m 0755 -d /etc/apt/keyrings
sudo curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg -o /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc
sudo chmod a+r /etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc

Add the repository to Apt sources:

echo \
"deb [arch=$(dpkg --print-architecture) signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/docker.asc] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu \
$(. /etc/os-release && echo "$VERSION_CODENAME") stable" | \
sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null
sudo apt-get update

Now You can finish installing docker by doing this:

sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io docker-buildx-plugin docker-compose-plugin

You also need to add Your user to the docker group as sudo is not supported

sudo gpasswd -a ${USER} docker

Now, logout and login again.

If you are using Linux kernel 5.3 or newer, then you must use Docker 20.10.10 or newer. This is because older Docker versions did not allow the clone3 syscall, which is now used in Bookworm.

To check if docker is running properly You need to use:

docker run hello-world

The output should be "hello world"

Before building an image You should also run the following commands:

sudo mkdir -p /var/cache/sonic/artifacts
sudo chown $USER: /var/cache/sonic/artifacts
sudo chmod 777 /var/cache/sonic/artifacts

Building image

After the docker is installed and working You need to clone the repository containing sonic-buildimage:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/sonic-net/sonic-buildimage.git

Ensure the 'overlay' module is loaded on your development system:

sudo modprobe overlay

Enter the source directory:

cd sonic-buildimage

(Optional) Checkout a specific branch. By default, it uses master branch.
For example, to checkout the branch 201911, use "git checkout 201911"

Leave it as is if You just want to try it out:

git checkout master

Execute make init once after cloning the repo, or after fetching remote repo with submodule updates:

make init

Execute make configure once to configure ASIC, this may take a while:

make configure PLATFORM=vs

Build SONiC image with 4 jobs in parallel.
Note: You can set this higher, but 4 is a good number for most cases and is well-tested.

make SONIC_BUILD_JOBS=[NUMBER_OF_CORES_TO_USE] target/sonic-vs.img.gz

By following this guide, you should be able to successfully compile the community version of SONiC VS on Ubuntu system. This image allows for a virtualized environment to test and develop SONiC without the need for physical hardware.