GNS3 - Vista Blues

redwarrior

So, I bought a new laptop for home/study use because my ancient work laptop will not run GNS3. My only choice of OS was Vista, so I took the middle road and went with the 32 bit edition of Vista Home Premium with a respectable and upgradable 2 Gigs of RAM. I installed the latest release of the full GNS3 pack along with Putty and my hopes were high and I was happily enjoying my snazzy new display. I downloaded various IOS versions to try to play with and...nothing.

Every time I boot a router, it decompresses the image, then allocates PMem and IOmem and then...nothing. No error and GNS3 doesn't even freeze, but the router just won't boot! I've upgraded my laptop to all the latest and greatest drivers, I fiddled with the Idlepc times of the routers, I've downloaded several IOS images for various router models to try and...nothing.

Sigh...no GNS3 for me...still. I've posted a post in the GNS3 forums, but wondered if any of this sounded familiar to you good people?

Thanks!

gorebrush

Strange, I've been using it successfully on Vista 64bit Ultimate, for ages!

dynamik

It runs ok on Vista x64 for me. It locks up from time to time though. I just switched to plain 'ol dynagen. It takes a couple hours to learn the syntax and how to configure your network files, but after that, it's smooth sailing. GNS3 still seemed a bit clunky for me, so I haven't minded the switch at all.

JavonR

that's weird... I used to have all kinds of issues when I ran GNS3 in xp (dynamips crashing etc.). Rock solid stable on linux though, I can leave it up for weeks at a time with no issues

networker050184

I run Dynamips on Vista all the time with no issues. Have you tried decompressing the image before trying to load it? Have you tired using auto start false and manually starting the routers one by one?

NullCode

Have you tried getting some other IOS s?

redwarrior

Tried multiple IOS images. I have them as .bin files...I'm not sure how to decompress them further? I'm only trying to run one router at a time right now and I'm manually starting them. I'll go check the GNS3 forum and see if anyone has taken pity on me.

I think I will move to plain ol' dynagen for BSCI, but I was hoping to take the lazy way out just to do a little playing with the SDM and some DSL configuration for this one. Looks like I'll have to drag my 1710 out of the closet and dust it off!

redwarrior

I went ahead and got the IOS image unpacker from GNS3's website and ran it on a 1700 image that I know is good (advsecurity version). I succesfully unpacked the binary and tried to use that as my default image...and now I get an error: "209 - Unable to start VM instance - R0" (Yes, I have not renamed my router yet, so it's still R0!)

I'm a sad panda. I think I'll keep picking at it, though.

dynamik

Hey, you might want to try and right-click on whatever .exe you're using and running as administrator. Vista's security can cause odd problems that aren't as obvious as "access denied."

redwarrior

I think I might have found part of the problem. No matter what IOS image I load into the preferences and how I configure it, when I save and close and then reopen, it has lost the path to the image file and then lists the router type for that image as a 3700. I guess I'm gonna reinstall again. Ugh.

networker050184

Just go with Dynagen its so much easier. I don't understand why Cisco people need the pretty GUI

redwarrior

I'm going to do that today...for some reason, I just thought that for one router, GNS3 would be easier. <sigh> I'm gonna go look up some dynagen instructions!

networker050184

redwarrior wrote:

I'm going to do that today...for some reason, I just thought that for one router, GNS3 would be easier. <sigh> I'm gonna go look up some dynagen instructions!

The download comes with the tutorial file. If you read through that before trying to set it up you shouldn't have any issues.

malcybood

redwarrior, use winrar to decompress/extract the file for dynagen dynamips - it's a sinch! Exactly the same as you would do for a zip file and just make sure you extract it to the "images" folder.

I'm with networker on the pretty pictures not required point of view!

Tutorial below for decompression of IOS in dynagen

http://dynagen.org/tutorial.htm#_Toc193247993

redwarrior

I tried downloading dynagen and running it, but it kept giving me errors and couldn't find my loopback interface. I tried installing Winpcap again and tinkering with it, installing and reinstalling and finally gave up and blew the dust off of my 1710 for some practice.

I'll give it another go after the holidays...I think it is probably more the way I have Vista set up (or lack of setting up Vista beyond how it came).

Thanks again for all the help and I definitely will come back to this after I get a study break (assuming I pass tomorrow!!!) I'm also upping my RAM from 2 Gig to 4 Gig and goodness knows that ought to help free up some memory for non-Vista tasks! I've never seen a OS hog this much resources, but then this is really my first experience with Vista. Is Windows 7 here yet?! LOL!

tiersten

redwarrior wrote:

I'm also upping my RAM from 2 Gig to 4 Gig and goodness knows that ought to help free up some memory for non-Vista tasks! I've never seen a OS hog this much resources, but then this is really my first experience with Vista.

You can turn off all the Vista eyecandy and it'll lower the resource requirements by quite a bit. As for upgrading to 4GB of RAM, unless you have a 64 bit OS there isn't much point going past about 3GB.

You can install 4GB and Vista will show that it sees 4GB but you can't use that last 1GB or so. It is a limitation of how the x86 architecture works when in 32 bit mode. There are workarounds that let you use more than 4GB in 32 bit mode but those create more issues than they solve. Vista SP1 actually changed the memory display to show how much memory is actually there instead of how much is actually usable. People complained about their flashy over the top 4GB 32 bit machine would only show ~3GB.

gorebrush

It's because 32 bit OS'es cannot address more than 4GB of RAM.

If you have a graphics card with 1GB Memory, it has to be able to address this.

So

4GB - Graphics Card RAM = Available.

I've got 8GB RAM and x64 Vista - it really is worth it (And RAM is cheeeeeeeap)

dynamik

Actually, it'll be less than that since other components will need some of the addressable memory space as well: http://blogs.msdn.com/hiltonl/archive/2007/04/13/the-3gb-not-4gb-ram-problem.aspx

redwarrior

Hmmm...I've got a dual-core and I've run 64bit linux on a dual core...this is tempting enough to attempt to install 64-bit Vista...

I think I might have a project for after Christmas. Of course I could always just switch to Linux!

shednik

redwarrior wrote:

Of course I could always just switch to Linux!

Your instincts don't lie

gorebrush

redwarrior wrote:

I think I might have found part of the problem. No matter what IOS image I load into the preferences and how I configure it, when I save and close and then reopen, it has lost the path to the image file and then lists the router type for that image as a 3700. I guess I'm gonna reinstall again. Ugh.

I had this problem.

In the end I just rewrote the paths in the INI and NET files and it worked.

JavonR

redwarrior wrote:

Hmmm...I've got a dual-core and I've run 64bit linux on a dual core...this is tempting enough to attempt to install 64-bit Vista...

I think I might have a project for after Christmas. Of course I could always just switch to Linux!

Full time linux - it's the only way to roll

redwarrior

The only thing that is even remotely keeping me from doing it is that I have a cool backlit keyboard on the thing that I can almost bet you I will not be able to find a driver for in Linux. I should have just bought a pre-loaded linux laptop. Darn you, Dell corporate discount!!!!