Like many people, I’ve used GNS3 for a long time to help with mocking up network topologies when trying something new or even as a refresher on topics I do not use on a regular basis. This has always been a simple download and install on windows but I made the switch to Linux (Ubuntu) fulltime a little while back and now it is time to figure out how to get GNS3 and Dynamips up and running in the Linux world.
A quick google search for “install GNS3 on Ubuntu 12.04 x64” found a surprisingly small number of relevant search results for the manual method. So here is my experience, hopefully it will help.
First I want to note if you are in a time crunch you can take the easy road and install GNS3 from the “Ubuntu Software Center”. It probably will not be the latest version but it should work.
Lets dive in.
1. Install required packages
sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install python qt4-dev-tools pyqt4-dev-tools
2 . Create directory structure
cd /opt sudo mkdir GNS3 sudo chmod 777 GNS3 cd GNS3 sudo mkdir Dynamips Images Project Cache tmp sudo chmod 777 Dynamips/ Images/ Project/ Cache/ tmp/
3. Download GNS3 files (version 0.8.3)
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/gns-3/files/GNS3/0.8.3/GNS3-0.8.3-src.tar.gz
4. Download Dynamips files (version 0.2.8)
cd Dynamips/ wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/gns-3/files/Dynamips/0.2.8-RC3-community/dynamips-0.2.8-RC3-community-x86_64.bin cd ..
5. Extract GNS3
tar -xvf GNS3-0.8.3-src.tar.gz rm GNS3-0.8.3-src.tar.gz cd GNS3-0.8.3-src
6. Place GNS3 into PATH
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/GNS3/GNS3-0.8.3/
7. Run GNS3 (from terminal)
gns3
8. Setup GNS
Configure the correct paths for Dynamips and temporary working directory.
9. Configure IOS Images
- Add Cisco IOS file (your copy) to Images directory.
- In GNS3 go to Edit > IOS images and hypervisors
- Select the image file path
- Note: remember to setup an IDLE PC value. Explained in more detail on GNS3.net here
- Save Settings
