GNS3 Problems.

RouterOS Virtualization
1

Hello.

I’m pretty sure other users on the web might be facing difficulties with GNS3 on windows 10.

Running CHR on QEMU causes a lot of trouble. It doesn’t become responsive. Ping >2000ms. And sudden shutdown.
In addition QEMU is limited with interfaces… I can’t add more than 25 interface in one project.

When running CHR on a virtual machine alone it works like a charm.

Can anyone share his experience with GNS3 ?
And maybe posts a detailed walkthrough setting up CHR on GNS3 through VMWare or VirtualBox ??

It’d be much appreciated for all of us.

2

Hi MustaMT,

there is a lot of info on this topic (and also on Unified Networking Lab)
http://forum.mikrotik.com/t/routeros-virtual-labs/90606/1

My (somewhat dated but) working Mix of GNS3, Qemu and CHR versions is

http://forum.mikrotik.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=99658&start=50#p522618

  • GNS3 1.4.3
  • QEMU 2.4.0 (released August 11th 2015) using qemu-system-x86_64w.exe
  • CHR 6.33.5

I set the CHRs up directly in GNS3 using raw-images

Startup of the nodes in GNS3 takes some time, but afterwards they run reliably and are quite responsive. I can access them either via Winbox (through a loop device) or via Terminal directly through GNS3.

3

Yes i did follow that tutorial in the first place.

On my device the Virtual QEMU machines load well but the ping is in high 2000ms

In addition i can not add more than 10 interfaces/QEMU machine showing an error message of too much NICs.

4

do u have the issue with the interface name which start from ether0 but not ether1 ?
and also, if i disable the interface and enable again, i cannot ping to the direct connected interface.

very strange.

5

In the router’s device Template, on the network tab, under Name Format, change it to “ether{port1}” instead. Then the name and numbering will be consistent with MikroTik’s default naming :slight_smile:

6

I have had the same problem. I solved downgrading the qemu version to 2.1.2.
I usually run the devices with nested kvm.

7

I prefer to run CHR images in Virtualbox - my favorite thing about it is that I can add/remove network links w/o having to stop the router. This requirement is because of how qemu works - it instantiates the virtual ethernet interfaces at launch time and doesn’t (seem to) support dynamically adding/removing interface connections. Virtualbox doesn’t have this problem, but it is limited to just 4 NICs in my experience. Virtualbox seems to run better as well. The one thing about it that’s annoying to me is that it seems to break 802.1q tagging.

8

Virtualbox support up to 8 NICs IIRC. GUI is limited to 4. You can enable rest of them via CLI or XML VM config file.

9

Thanks for the tip - I’ll have to check into that. I’ve never really run into a situation where I required more than 4 interfaces in my simulations, but that could come in handy. I wonder if it’s not in the GUI because while supported, it’s not recommended for some reason or other. . .

Anyway I do have a question for you - do you know why CHR + Virtualbox has problems with 802.1q tagged frames? Is there a setting I can tweak that will allow me to tx/rx frames with an 802.1q header? (off-hand, I forget which direction has the tagged frames getting dropped, but it’s only one direction)