Tips for Dynamips / Dynagen on Leopard OS X

I downloaded the most recent Interim relase from the dynagen.org interim builds web site and then got to work in getting it setup.

To help with the scripting and updates I put everything into a directory under my documents folder called
dynalab
. Then I copied the Dynagen directory from the mounted DMG directly to its own directory.

Then I located some IOS code that I liked the look of, and dropped that into its own directory that I call
dyncode
Then I created a directory called
firstlab
and this is where I have created my lab. The directory looks like this:

Get Dynagen and locate it on your system

I downloaded the most recent Interim relase from the dynagen.org interim builds web site and then got to work in getting it setup.

To help with the scripting and updates I put everything into a directory under my Documents folder called dynalab. Then I copied the Dynagen directory from the mounted DMG directly to its own directory.

Then I located some IOS code that I liked the look of, and dropped that into its own directory so I can use the same IOS images in all of my dynamips confguration. I call the directory dynacode

Then I created a directory called firstlab and this is where I have created my lab. The directory look slike this:

Uncompress IOS file

I downloaded the Zipeg software from Zipeg which is able to uncompress IOS images into the dyncode directory. This means that your dynagen starts a whole lot faster, which suits my style. Also check here for more detail on how to do this.

Startup scripts

I found that I needed two scripts to get things going. Once script to start dynamips and another to run dynagen.

Startmips

#!/bin/sh
nice /Users/gregferro/Documents/dynalab/Dynagen/dynamips -H 7200 &

Note the use of “nice” to leave lots of CPU for other functions. I will spend some time lowering the niceness to see if it works OK with less CPU resource (another post)

first1
#!/bin/sh
/Users/gregferro/Documents/dynalab/Dynagen/Dynagen.app/Contents/MacOS/
Dynagen /Users/gregferro/Documents/dynalab/firstlab/first.net

I found saving these in my firstlab directory worked for me. Note that this is a single line command.

Starting Dynamips

Dynamips has to run as root, (I think that if you install it in your Applications Folder, then it is owned by root and will run without sudo, but I haven’t tested this idea).

to do this on OS X just use sudo:

gf:~ gregferro$ cd Documents/dynalab/firstlab/
gf:firstlab gregferro$ sudo ./startmips
Password: ******* enter your login password here

gf:firstlab gregferro$ Cisco Router Simulation Platform (version 0.2.8-RC2-x86)
Copyright (c) 2005-2007 Christophe Fillot.
Build date: Nov 11 2007 11:11:35

ILT: loaded table “mips64j” from cache.
ILT: loaded table “mips64e” from cache.
ILT: loaded table “ppc32j” from cache.
ILT: loaded table “ppc32e” from cache.
Hypervisor TCP control server started (port 7200).

gf:firstlab gregferro$

Starting your lab

You will need to create a lab config file. This is covered well enough in the dynagen documentation, you should read it thoroughly to obtain maximum enjoyment.

gf:firstlab gregferro$ .
You do not need to be root to start the dynagen loader.

If you got the config file syntax right, you should get an OSX terminal window that looks like this:

Making it a bit more usable

I prefer to use iTerm instead of terminal, so I have created a TAB that allow me to open all routers. You can download iTerm from Sourceforge for free. Highly recommended.

Create a big list of router consoles in the iTerm bookmarks

then you can open them all at once

Edit – See my other post on how to make input to every session at the same time