VyOS on GNS3

Sometimes you may want to test VyOS in a lab environment. GNS3 is a network emulation software you might use for it.

This guide will provide the necessary steps for installing and setting up VyOS on GNS3.

Requirements

The following items are required:

  • A VyOS installation image (.iso file). You can find how to get it on the Installation page

  • A working GNS3 installation. For further information see the GNS3 documentation.

VM setup

First, a virtual machine (VM) for the VyOS installation must be created in GNS3.

Go to the GNS3 File menu, click New template and select Manually create a new Template.

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Select Quemu VMs and then click on the New button.

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Write a name for your VM, for instance “VyOS”, and click Next.

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Select qemu-system-x86_64 as Quemu binary, then 512MB of RAM and click Next.

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Select telnet as your console type and click Next.

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Select New image for the base disk image of your VM and click Create.

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Use the defaults in the Binary and format window and click Next.

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Use the defaults in the Qcow2 options window and click Next.

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Set the disk size to 2000 MiB, and click Finish to end the Quemu image creator.

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Click Finish to end the New QEMU VM template wizard.

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Now the VM settings have to be edited.

Being again at the Preferences window, having Qemu VMs selected and having our new VM selected, click the Edit button.

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In the General settings tab of your QEMU VM template configuration, do the following:

  • Click on the Browse... button to choose the Symbol you want to have representing your VM.

  • In Category select in which group you want to find your VM.

  • Set the Boot priority to CD/DVD-ROM.

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At the HDD tab, change the Disk interface to sata to speed up the boot process.

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At the CD/DVD tab click on Browse... and locate the VyOS image you want to install.

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Note

You will probably want to accept, to copy the .iso file to your default image directory when you are asked.

In the Network tab, set 0 as the number of adapters, set the Name format to eth{0} and the Type to Paravirtualized Network I/O (virtio-net-pci).

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In the Advanced tab, unmark the checkbox Use as a linked base VM and click OK, which will save and close the QEMU VM template configuration window.

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At the general Preferences window, click OK to save and close.

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VyOS installation

  • Create a new project.

  • Drag the newly created VyOS VM into it.

  • Start the VM.

  • Open a console. The console should show the system booting. It will ask for the login credentials, you are at the VyOS live system.

  • Install VyOS as normal (that is, using the install image command).

  • After a successful installation, shutdown the VM with the poweroff command.

  • Delete the VM from the GNS3 project.

The VyOS-hda.qcow2 file now contains a working VyOS image and can be used as a template. But it still needs some fixes before we can deploy VyOS in our labs.

VyOS VM configuration

To turn the template into a working VyOS machine, further steps are necessary as outlined below:

General settings tab: Set the boot priority to HDD

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CD/DVD tab: Unmount the installation image file by clearing the Image entry field.

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Set the number of required network adapters, for example 4.

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Advanced settings tab: Mark the checkbox Use as a linked base VM and click OK to save the changes.

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The VyOS VM is now ready to be deployed.