mfthomps/labtainersLabtainers: A Docker-based cyber lab framework
Labtainers include more than 50 cyber lab exercises and tools to build your own. Import a single VM appliance or install on a Linux system and your students are done with provisioning and administrative setup, for these and future lab exercises.
Labtainers provide controlled and consistent execution environments in which students perform labs entirely within the confines of their computer, regardless of the Linux distribution and packages installed on the student's computer. Labtainers run on our [VM appliance][vm-appliancee], or on any Linux with Dockers installed. And Labtainers is available as cloud-based VMs, e.g., on Azure as described in the Student Guide.
See the Student Guide for installation and use, and the Instructor Guide for student assessment. Developing and customizing lab exercises is described in the Designer Guide. See the Papers for additional information about the framework. The Labtainers website, and downloads (including VM appliances with Labtainers pre-installed) are at https://nps.edu/web/c3o/labtainers.
Distribution created: 09/11/2026 11:33
Revision: v1.4.4n
Commit: 9f1012dc
Branch: master
Please see the licensing and distribution information in the docs/license.md file.
scripts/labtainers-student -- the work directory for running and testing student labs. You must be in that directory to run student labs.
scripts/labtainers-instructor -- the work directory for running and testing automated assessment and viewing student results.
labs -- Files specific to each of the labs
setup_scripts -- scripts for installing Labtainers and Docker and updating Labtainers
docs -- latex source for the labdesigner.pdf, and other documentation.
UI -- Labtainers lab editor source code (Java).
headless-lite -- scripts for managing Docker Workstation and cloud instances of Labtainers (systems that do not have native X11 servers.)
scripts/designer -- Tools for building new labs and managing base Docker images.
config -- system-wide configuration settings (these are not the lab-specific configuration settings.
distrib -- distribution support scripts, e.g., for publishing labs to the Docker hub.
testsets -- Test procedures and expected results. (Per-lab drivers for SimLab are not distributed).
pkg-mirrors -- utility scripts for internal NPS package mirroring to reduce external package pulling during tests and distribution.
Use the GitHub issue reports, or email me at [email protected]
Also see https://my.nps.edu/web/c3o/support1
The standard Labtainers distribution does not include files required for development of new labs. For those, run ./update-designer.sh from the labtainer/trunk/setup_scripts directory.
The installation script and the update-designer.sh script set environment variables, so you may want to logout/login, or start a new bash shell before using Labtainers the first time.
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