Lethe's Ccielogs

 Hello all, this article is the first part of a series of posts where I'll guide you through the installation of Junos in GNS3 to test Juniper stuff and use it in your lab; as I've written in another post the latest RC release of GNS3 has support for Junos Operating System, basically Juniper's equivalent to IOS, which is often referred to as Olive when it is emulated on a PC. In this first post I'll just describe but Olive is and what we need to make it work with GNS3 on a Linux host, if you're interested on a Windows version of the post just let me know and I'll work on that.

Keep in mind Olive is not supported and it is just the result of the hard work of the community and people wishing to learn more about Junos without having to buy a full equipment, please also keep in mind Junos is not freely available and it is not part of GNS3 package and, last but not least, I won't be able to send you links where to download it.

In this first post

All of the above is very well summarized and documented in a site, I've used it in the past to build my own Olive machines using VmWare (which trust me was not fun at all) used to prepare for my JNCIA-ER exam, found here which can be summarized as follows :

Olive is also the codename name given to JUNOS software running on an PC rather than a Juniper router. A common misconception is that Olive is some sort of "special software", but it is actually ordinary JUNOS software running on a PC of similar specifications to a Routing Engine, with no forwarding hardware (or PFE) attached. 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.

Juniper originally developed Olive functionality as a software development platform, before its hardware product was fully implemented. It is not intended as a "router simulator", and has never been a supported product, or intended for use by the general public in any way. At one point it was used by Juniper internally for lab work, but has largely been phased out of this role with the availability of low-end hardware based platforms such as the M5.

The most common use of the Olive platform is for creative and unix-competent hackers to learn the JUNOS CLI on a low-cost platform. It is capable of forwarding a small amount of traffic, but does not support many of the features found on real Juniper routers. Essentially the forwarding on an Olive is the same as routing traffic via your fxp0 or em0 management interface on a real Routing Engine.

Juniper's official position is that Olive does not exist. Considering that Olive is an unsupported and unsupportable platform using "free" (aka illegally licensed) software, this is not an unreasonable official position. Olive is essentially a hackers platform, with absolutely no support of any kind, and it is not suitable for any type of commercial use. If you are in any doubt, or if you are not able to figure it out, you should invest in a low-cost platform such as J-Series instead.

It is also important to remember that Olive exists because Juniper allows it to exist, and is a testament to the mutual respect between the extremely knowledgeable developer and user bases. If the Olive platform became widely abused, Juniper could easily add additional software checks to prevent it from working. Please do not abuse this feature by doing stupid things like contacting JTAC for support on an Olive, or selling illegal copies of the software as "router simulators". This type of activity is likely to have serious legal consequences and/or provoke a justified response from Juniper, so just don't do it.

Ok enough of an introduction. If you think this is cool and you're excited about learning something new, keep on reading the series and you'll discover what Junos can do for you (having spent sometime with it I personally think it is even better than IOS, no doubt it almost Unix ). 

So what do we need to start building our Olive lab? Here's the list (no worries I'll explain all the details and installation/configuration steps in the following article of the series) :

- A Linux box configure with all the required packages to run GNS3

- A copy of FreeBSD mini installation DVD which can be dowloaded from here

- The Junos installation package (again you'll have to find it yourself)

- Qemu and Kqemu which are part of the standard Linux repositories

In the next article of the series I'll start describing the process of installing and configuring Qemu and Kqemu so that we'll be able to install and configure FreeBSD to install Junos. 

Lethe.

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Article by Lethe

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Daniele Catanesi, aka Lethe, is the mind behing Lethe's Ccielogs. He is a veteran of the IT industry with more than ten years of experience in the various fields. Daniele has been mainly working as IT Architect and Trainer for a lot of Enteprise customers implementing cutting edge technologies and complex solutions. Daniele currently holds various certification among which MCITP, CCNP, LPI, Citrix and working tirelessly to his RHCE and RHCA. When he is not busy working or studying for the next exam he writes on the blog trying to give administrators and students around the world tips and suggestion to help them succeed in their career and job.