Mikrotik Netinstall in a Container

Overview

This container is designed to run on alternate platforms (eg. ARM/ARM64) and to facilitate a simple netinstall experience

Enviroment Variables

Name	Default	Description
NETINSTALL_ADDR	192.168.88.1	Client IP Address for Netinstall to assign
NETINSTALL_ARGS	<null>	Allows specifying additional arguments such as '-r' to reset config (https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ROS/Netinstall#Netinstall-InstructionsforLinux)
NETINSTALL_ARCH	arm64	CPU Architecture to use when selecting npk
NETINSTALL_VER	7.14.1	RouterOS version to use when selecting npk
NETINSTALL_PKGS	routeros	Packages to install seperated by space (eg. routeros container) Do NOT include anything but the package name

Usage on RouterOS v7

With the implementation of containers in ROSv7, we can now enjoy a netinstall experience from another Mikrotik

Testing has been completed with a RB4011 (v7.6b8) running the container to flash a RB2011

Steps

The below steps will create a container linking to ether5, and set netinstall to perform a full reset/recovery of RouterOS v7.14.1 for arm64 with the container package

1. Enable containers and install package (refer wiki)
2. Create folder images under disk1
3. Upload npk files to images folder
4. Create veth interface

   /interface veth add address=192.168.88.6/24 gateway=192.168.88.1 name=veth1
   

5. Create bridge

   /interface bridge add name=dockers
   

6. Add veth and physical port to bridge

   /interface bridge port add bridge=dockers interface=veth1
   /interface bridge port add bridge=dockers interface=ether5
   

7. Create mount to contain npk files

   /container mounts add dst=/app/images name=images src=/disk1/images
   

8. Create enviroment set, and specify npk file to use

   /container envs add key=NETINSTALL_ARCH name=NETINSTALL value=arm64
   /container envs add key=NETINSTALL_VER name=NETINSTALL value=7.14.1
   /container envs add key=NETINSTALL_PKGS name=NETINSTALL value="routeros container"
   /container envs add key=NETINSTALL_ARGS name=NETINSTALL value="-r -b"
   

9. Create container

   /container add remote-image=semaja2/mikrotik-netinstall:latest envlist=NETINSTALL interface=veth1 logging=yes mounts=images workdir=/app
   

Usage with Podman

TODO

Allow containers to bind to lower ports

sudo sh -c "echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_unprivileged_port_start"

Usage with Docker

Due to limitations with Docker, the container can only work via the --network=host network parameter, as such this is only useful on Linux as this driver is not available for Windows/MacOS

The host networking driver only works on Linux hosts, and is not supported on Docker Desktop for Mac, Docker Desktop for Windows, or Docker EE for Windows Server.

TODO