How to install GNS3 network emulator on Ubuntu VM

If you want to more about GNS3 network emulator, please check out our blog post here.

First of all, we need to install Ubuntu VM on the ProxMox. and here are the steps to install Ubuntu Server 22.04 on a Proxmox with 8 GB RAM, 120 GB storage, and CPU as host:

Log in to your Proxmox server and click on the “Create VM” button in the top right corner.
In the “New VM” dialog, enter the following information:

Name: Enter a name for your VM (e.g., “GNS3”)
Resource pool: Leave this as the default value
Type: Choose “Linux”
Version: Choose “5.x – 2.6 Kernel”

Click on the “Next” button to proceed to the next step.
In the “CPU” tab, select the “Number of cores” as “4” and leave the rest of the settings as their default values.
In the “Memory” tab, enter “8192” for the “Memory” value and leave the rest of the settings as their default values.
In the “Hard Disk” tab, select “SCSI” as the “Device type” and enter “120 GB” for the “Disk size” value. Leave the rest of the settings as their default values.
In the “CD/DVD” tab, select the “Use ISO image” option and choose the Ubuntu Server 22.04 ISO file that you want to use for the installation.
Click on the “Finish” button to create the VM.
Now, start the VM by clicking on the “Start” button in the top right corner.
The VM will boot from the Ubuntu Server 22.04 ISO and start the installation process. Follow the prompts to install Ubuntu Server 22.04 on the VM.

Note: Sometimes we are going to create complex network environment on GNS3, it means our lab will need more resources, please choose the sufficient CPU, RAM and storage resources as your needs.

As soon as the Ubuntu VM is up and running on ProxMox, follow below steps to install GNS3 network emulator:

First, make sure that your Ubuntu VM is up to date by running the following command:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Next, you’ll need to run the following command to install the necessary packages and GNS3 server:

cd /tmp
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/GNS3/gns3-server/master/scripts/remote-install.sh > gns3-remote-install.sh
bash gns3-remote-install.sh --with-iou --with-i386-repository

At the smae time, we need to install GNS3 client on our pc. Please go to GNS3 official web site and download and install the right GNS3 client on your pc: Windows, Mac or Linux version.

Start the GNS3 client on your pc, go ahead with the setup wizard, on the server selection, please use Run appliances on a remote server
Type the IP address of Ubuntu server that we have installed GNS3 server at step 2 with user name and password as well.