Running JunOS under VMWare (updated – again!)

Interested in trying out JunOS? Can’t afford to build a real Juniper lab? Sounds like you need some Olives. No, we’re not talking about the green fruit commonly seen in a martini glasses across the nation. Olive is the codename name given to JunOS software running on something other than a Juniper router. It can either run on a PC of similar specifications to a Routing Engine, with no forwarding hardware (or PFE) attached, or inside a Virtual Machine (VM). If you took a Routing Engine out of a Juniper router and booted it in a blade server chassis, it would effectively be an Olive.

This guide is to help you run Olive inside vmware to create a virtual Juniper router lab. You can also extend your lab to dynamips (Cisco Emulation), or other router VMs that you may have. My screenshots will be from VMWare Fusion on Mac OS X, but should work perfectly well, possibly even better (since you’ll be able to setup multiple interfaces) on VMWare Server. At some point, I would like to test using VMWare ESXi as well.

As far as ESXi is concerned, this only works on 4.0 which requires x64 hardware. I’m out of luck and stuck running ESXi 3.5 for now.

Software

The first step is obtaining a copy of JunOS. I recommend using 9.4 (jinstall-9.4R1.8-export-signed.tgz) or higher as earlier versions had issues with multicast working properly under vmware. Do not ask for me for copies of JunOS Since JunOS runs top of FreeBSD, you will also need to download the FreeBSD 4.11 mini .iso from the FreeBSD FTP site.

Setting up your Virtual Machine

Our initial settings should be something along the lines of …

• Disk – IDE 4gb
• Memory – 512MB (you can reduce later to 128MB (or less ( untested ) ) )
• Interface – NAT or Shared ( up to you )
• CD/Optical – Point to the FreeBSD ISO

Installing FreeBSD 4.11

• Feel free to skip the custom kernel config
• Standard Install
• On fdsik screen select a (use entire disk) then q (finish)
• You can use the default FreeBSD boot manager
  [singlepic id=194 w=100]
• In the BSD Disk Label Editor, use the following setup.

   ad0s1a     /               512M
   ad0s1b	    swap            1024M
   ad0s1e	    /config         12M
   ad0s1f     /var            the rest
  

• Next it will ask you which distribution set you wish to install. Go with User, and do not install the ports collection.
• On the next screen, choose CD as your media for install. It will then ask if you you’re sure you wish to proceed. Choose yes, unless you’re scared.

Post Install Config

After the install, you’ll be taken through some configuration options…

• Config Ethernet: Yes
• Select em0
• Config IPv6: No
• Config DHCP: Yes
• Network Gateway: No
• Config Inetd: No
• Config Anonymous FTP: No
• Config NFS Server: No
• Config NFS Client: No
• Select Default Security Profile: No
• Customize System Console: No
• Set Time Zone: Yes/NoIts really up to you if you want to do this…
• Enable Linux Binary Compatibility: No
• Non USB Mouse: No
• Browse Package Collection: No
• Add Accounts: Yes
• General Configuration Menu: No
• After the post install config, you will be taken back to the sysinstall Main Menu, go ahead and exit / reboot
• On the first boot, it may hang here for a moment, be patient..
  

Preparing and Installing JunOS

Ok, now that we have a working FreeBSD installation, we need to copy our jinstall image over using the account we created. Use ifconfig to figure out your DHCP address and scp the file over.. go ahead and put it in /var/tmp
In order to install JunOS, we have to circumvent some things.. Juniper has installed a binary in JunOS packages since version 7.4 called checkpic. This binary will fail during install and and interrupt the process. Extracting the package and replacing this binary with /usr/bin/true and repackaging fixes this issue.

cd /var/tmp
mkdir jinst-signed
cd jinst-signed
tar zxvf ../jinstall-9.4R1.8-export-signed.tgz

mkdir jinst
cd jinst
tar zxvf ../jinstall-9.4R1.8-export.tgz

mkdir pkgtools
cd pkgtools
tar zxvf ../pkgtools.tgz
cd bin
cp /usr/bin/true ./checkpic
cd ..

tar zcvf ../pkgtools.tgz *
cd ..
rm -rf pkgtools

tar zcfv /var/tmp/jinstall-9.4R1.8-export-olive.tgz *

Install your new modified jinstall package.

pkg_add -f /var/tmp/jinstall-9.4R1-8-export-olive.tgz

After it has finished, go ahead and issue a normal reboot command. Upon reboot, you may think the VM is hung, but its just fine. It is no longer outputting kernel messages to the screen, behind the scenes the JunOS install is completing and will reboot when finished. You will be able to login in a few minutes.

Update – 11/8/2009

VMware Server Users have had some issues with the secondary install (1st reboot after jinstall) hanging on the following line.

The simple fix for this is to edit the appropriate VMware configuration file ( whatever.vmx ) and change the line that reads.

scsi0.present = "TRUE"

to

scsi0.present = "FALSE"

Since JunOS has no support for SCSI devices, this prevents it from hanging when one is present. Many thanks to the commenters that suggested this fix.

Post Install

To tell the boot loader to send kernel messages to the video console is simple. Just edit the file /boot/loader.conf and change the line that reads….

console="comconsole"

to

console="vidconsole"

Conclusion

While this is far from a perfect solution ( at least under VMWare fusion.. ) It works quite well for getting your feet well in the JunOS environment. If you have any issues with getting this setup, feel free to comment below and I’ll try to point you in the right direction.

Also many thanks to everyone from the ineternetwork pro wiki, without their guide on qemu I would’ve been completely lost.

Tagged as: junos, VMWare