(netlab-install)=
# Install System Software

**netlab install** uses internal installation scripts to install nice-to-have Ubuntu software, Ansible and related networking libraries, or libvirt+vagrant.

The *ubuntu*, *libvirt*, and *containerlab* installation scripts run only on Ubuntu[^U20] and Debian[^D10]; the *ansible* and *grpc* installation scripts should run in any environment with **bash** and **pip3**.

## Usage

```text
netlab install -h
usage: netlab install [-h] [-v] [-q] [-y] [-u] [--all] [script ...]

Install additional software

positional arguments:
  script         Run the specified installation script

options:
  -h, --help     show this help message and exit
  -v, --verbose  Verbose logging
  -q, --quiet    Be as quiet as possible
  -y, --yes      Run the script without prompting for a confirmation
  -u, --user     Install Python libraries into user .local directory
  --all          Run all installation scripts

Run "netlab install" with no arguments to get install script descriptions
```

```{tip}
Running multiple installation scripts with **‌netlab install** or **netlab install --all** might fail on some Ubuntu distributions due to background processes locking the APT repository directory. If you experience that problem, execute multiple **‌netlab install** commands (one per installation script).
```

## Installation Scripts

* The *ubuntu* script installs Python3 development components that might be needed for Ansible installation, common tools like **git** and **sshpass**, and XML libraries.
* The *libvirt* script installs *libvirt* and supporting libraries/packages, *vagrant*, *vagrant-libvirt* plugin, and creates the *vagrant-libvirt* virtual network.
* The *containerlab* script installs Docker Engine and *containerlab*.
* The *ansible* script uses **pip3** to install the latest version of Ansible, networking libraries (*netaddr, paramiko, netmiko*), text parsing libraries (*testfsm, ttp, ntc-templates*), and a few other utility libraries (*jmespath, yamllint, yq*)
* The *graph* script installs GraphViz and D2 software needed to generate graphs from _netlab_ topologies
* The *grpc* script installs gRPC Python libraries needed to configure Nokia SR Linux and Nokia SR OS.

[^U20]: Tested on Ubuntu 20.04, 22.04, and 24.04

[^D10]: Tested on Debian 12 (bookworm)

You can display an up-to-date list of installation scripts with **netlab install** command:

```text
$ netlab install
┏━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Script       ┃ Installs                                          ┃
┡━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ ubuntu       │ Mandatory and nice-to have Debian/Ubuntu packages │
│ libvirt      │ QEMU, KVM, libvirt, and Vagrant                   │
│ containerlab │ Docker and containerlab                           │
│ ansible      │ Ansible and prerequisite Python libraries         │
│ grpc         │ GRPC libraries and Nokia GRPC Ansible collection  │
│ graph        │ GraphViz and D2 software                          │
└──────────────┴───────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```

(netlab-install-python)=
## Python Package Installation

Unless you started the **netlab install** command in a Python virtual environment, it runs **pip3** as root. You can change that default with the `-u` option, asking **netlab install** to install Python packages into the `~/.local` directory.

Newer Python installations (including Ubuntu 22.04) refuse to install Python packages outside a virtual environment. In these cases, **netlab install** asks the user for a confirmation and uses `--break-system-packages` **pip3** option to force user-wide or system-wide package installation:

![](install-warnings.png)