billyball1517/gns3server repository overview

⁠billyball1517/gns3server

⁠Introduction

NOTES:

• This image supports both QEMU/KVM Virtual Machines and Docker Containers.
• This image is only the "server" component of GNS3, for the GUI component, I recommend pip3. Make sure that the python3-devel package (or whatever your distro's equivalent package is) is installed, then run: sudo pip3 install sip pyqt5 gns3-gui. More info here: https://docs.gns3.com/1QXVIihk7dsOL7Xr7Bmz4zRzTsJ02wklfImGuHwTlaA4/index.html#h.xo8m7q5xitv6⁠

The container installs gns3-server, creates a dummy "user" account, mounts the dummy user /home folder to the specified local folder, and runs the server as that user.

⁠Steps

For QEMU/KVM to work, the dummy user needs to be able to access /dev/kvm on the host machine. To do this we need to know the GID of the "kvm" group on the host. Execute:

grep kvm /etc/group

And you will get an output similar to:

kvm:x:130:

So we know the GID for /dev/kvm is "130"

NOTE: Some distros don't have a kvm group even if /dev/kvm exists. Don't ask me why. If this is the case, your best bet is to install the qemu-kvm package.

Next, we need to make a gns3 user on the local machine.

useradd -m -s /usr/sbin/nologin -d /var/lib/gns3 gns3

We need to know the UID and home folder for the gns3 user. Execute:

grep gns3 /etc/passwd

And you will get an output similar to:

gns3:x:1001:1001::/var/lib/gns3:/usr/sbin/nologin

So we know the UID for the user gns3 is "1001" and the home folder is "/var/lib/gns3"

Finally, execute the following command, remembering to substitute the values you found out in the previous steps:

docker run -d --name=gns3_session --dns=8.8.8.8 --restart=always --privileged -e LOCAL_USER_ID=<localuserid> -e LOCAL_GROUP_ID=<localgroupid> -v <localfolder>:/home/user billyball1517/gns3server

So in our example, we get:

docker run -d --name=gns3_session --dns=8.8.8.8 --restart=always --privileged -e LOCAL_USER_ID=1001 -e LOCAL_GROUP_ID=130 -v /var/lib/gns3:/home/user billyball1517/gns3server

To find the ip address of the running container, run:

docker inspect -f '{{range .NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}' gns3_session

When you run the GNS3 GUI, simply point it to that IP address.

Since the gns3 data is made persistent in the /var/lib/gns3 folder, upgrading is easy. Simply delete the running container, pull the image again, and start the container with the same command you used previously.

⁠ADDITIONAL INFO

Make sure the path when creating projects is /home/user/...... rather than your local user account home folder.