Over the past couple of weeks I have been working on creating some newer DEB packages for gns3 and dynamips.

I have packaged:

> GNS3 0.8.4-RC3
> Dynamips 0.2.8-RC6 (both amd64 and i386)

There are a few differances to the GNS3 package originally created by Eric Wenzel, which I will outline below.

> qemuwrapper.py, vboxwrapper.py, vboxcontroller_4_1.py, tcp_pipe_proxy.py have all been moved to /usr/share/gns3/ (which relates to the program defaults)
> baseconfig.txt, baseconfig_sw.txt are still installed in /usr/share/doc/gns3/ but are copied to /usr/local/share/examples/gns3/ to enable the first run wizard to copy these to the Images folder
> I have updated the mimetypes to use the newer freedesktop standard
> I have included both png icons and a pixmap icon
> Have added wireshark as a recommended package (not sure how well this works with the various package managers)

The dynamips package should also set the appropriate capabilites on the dynamips executable to enable you to run gns3 as a regular user, for details on what is set see the following post p19569

You can find the packages at http://gns3.serverb.co.uk.
I have also created a seperate bugtracker for these DEB packages at http://gns3.serverb.co.uk/bugtracker, which can be used to submit any bugs/suggestions relating to either package.

As dynamips is a dependancy of GNS3 the dynamips-communty package must be installed BEFORE installing the GNS3 package

At the moment these packages should be considered unstable, though I have tested them on my machines and not had any issues. I don't intend to submit these packages to the official repositries as yet until i'm happy they can be considered stable, so I would also be greatful if people can report successful use of the packages, along with Operating system versions.

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Daniel
Forum Moderator & Debian Package Maintainer for GNS3, Dynamips & VPCS.
Standalone DEB Packages are available from http://gns3.serverb.co.uk - To be updated!

Can't wait to test! Thanks.

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RedNectar
http://rednectar.net
@rednectarchris
GNS3 WorkBench-a VMware image of Ubuntu with GNS3 and VPCS installed and a collection of exercises/labs

Had hoped it would solve problem: topic6434.html - but sadly - No.

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RedNectar
http://rednectar.net
@rednectarchris
GNS3 WorkBench-a VMware image of Ubuntu with GNS3 and VPCS installed and a collection of exercises/labs

Well I've found the first stumbling block with the Dynamips packages... Debian itself! Due to the way packages are added to the debian repo's libc6 is still at 2.13 (currently depends on 2.15).

This should only affect Debian and not Ubuntu based distrobutions (which have newer versions of libc6 available).

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Daniel
Forum Moderator & Debian Package Maintainer for GNS3, Dynamips & VPCS.
Standalone DEB Packages are available from http://gns3.serverb.co.uk - To be updated!

Hi Daniel,

That's awesome! I've been working a bit on this a few weeks ago without getting something finalized... This is great you did it cause this whole Debian packaging thing was giving me headaches ;)

Hopefully the packages can be considered stable soon and included in our official repo. Did you use stdeb to make the GNS3 package or another process/tool? Please when you have time I would like to know the complete procedure you used so I can maybe integrate everything to our building process and automate things.

Also, in the future it would be great to have final versions of the packages pushed to Ubuntu/Debian official repositories. An alternative for Ubuntu is to use PPA, which is more flexible I think.

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Jeremy, GNS3 Programmer & Benevolent Dictator for Life.

It certainly wasn't easy! I used debhelper and debuild to make the GNS3 package. For the dynamips package I started with dh_make.

I shall put together some more details of the how I made the GNS3 package over the next few days.

As for the offical debian/ubuntu repos -
Debian - Seems quite difficult to do, need to complete keysigning etc and be approved to become a maintainer. Packages can also be sponsored by an existing maintainer.
Ubuntu - Maybe slightly easier (haven't read all the details as yet!)

The main problem I can see us facing is that GNS3 already exists in the Debian/Ubuntu repos as packaged by Eric Wenzel. There is a system for non-maintainer uploads but again I would need to look into this more.

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Daniel
Forum Moderator & Debian Package Maintainer for GNS3, Dynamips & VPCS.
Standalone DEB Packages are available from http://gns3.serverb.co.uk - To be updated!

@grossmj

I have uploaded the debian directories, which contain the files that control the build process.

Apparently there is a system, to use the setup.py file and generate a deb package but I would need to look into this further. For the GNS3 package I processed everything by hand (not using setup.py)

I will try and give a rundown on what the various files are for...

GNS3 - https://bitbucket.org/dlintott/gns3/src
debian/changelog - This is the standard debian changelog file, I imported the most recent and added a new entry
debian/compat - DEBHelper Compatability Level
debian/control - This file contains the package name, dependencies, description etc.
debian/copyright - Debian machine readable, licence file
debian/dirs - This is used to create additional directories in the build tree (dh_installdirs)
debian/docs - List the documentation to install (dh_installdocs)
debian/gns3.postinst - Outline for the postinst (post-install) which contains additional scripting to be run. (#DEBHELPER# is automatically replaced when building)
debian/gns3.postrm - Outline for the postrm (post-remove)
debian/gns3.prerm - Outline for the prerm (pre-remove)
debian/install - List the files to be installed into the package and their destination (dh_install)
debian/links - Creates symlinks between files (dh_link)
debian/manpages - List the manpages to be installed (dh_installman)
debian/menu - Creates the debian menu entries (dh_installmenu)
debian/rules - This is the rules file that controls the build process. I added a couple of overrides to enable to tweak the build
debian/sharedmimeinfo - This creates the mime type for .net files to allow then to opened from a directory browser (dh_intstallmime)
debian/ucf - Copies and registers the system-wide gns3.ini with the UCF system (dh_ucf)

debian/additional/* - This contains any additional files that were needed in the package, but not included in the source package.
debian/source/format - List the debian source packge format (http://wiki.debian.org/Projects/DebSrc3.0)
debian/source/include-binaries - List the files to additional binary files that are included from the additional directory

That should provide a bit of insight into the building of the package. The dynamips package was slightly different as it actually has to be compiled.

_________________
Daniel
Forum Moderator & Debian Package Maintainer for GNS3, Dynamips & VPCS.
Standalone DEB Packages are available from http://gns3.serverb.co.uk - To be updated!

@claydon_dan,

Looks like you've become our deb package expert! Congratulations and well done.

But we also need a .deb for vpcs. The current source files are at http://sourceforge.net/projects/vpcs/files/0.4/beta/ where you will find both 32 and 64 bit binaries, along with the vpcs.1 man page. Would you mid putting it together?

There is also a version 5.0alpha, which includes a hypervisor, but I don't consider it ready for consumption yet. BTW - if you wanted to play with the hypervisor, it operates on port 21000 by default (something Paul neglected to mention on the sf page) , and don't bother with the windows version. Hopefully it will be ready soon - at least the vpcs part.

PS I think your packager probably does a better job than setup.py - at least in terms of putting things in more "standard" places. By that I mean that dynamips and gns3 gets installed in the /usr/bin directory, just like wireshark does

Chris

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RedNectar
http://rednectar.net
@rednectarchris
GNS3 WorkBench-a VMware image of Ubuntu with GNS3 and VPCS installed and a collection of exercises/labs

I wouldn't necessarily say i'm an expert... considering a month ago I'd never created a deb package! But I enjoy learning and once I get into a task I don't like to give up.


I shall certainly have a look at it and see what I can come up with.


Thanks - I believe the package does still comply with the debian packaging guidelines... but they take some reading!

_________________
Daniel
Forum Moderator & Debian Package Maintainer for GNS3, Dynamips & VPCS.
Standalone DEB Packages are available from http://gns3.serverb.co.uk - To be updated!

@rednectar @grossmj

Re: VPCS Package

Creating a deb package for VPCS shouldn't be a problem at all. In line with the other packages, VPCS should get installed to /usr/bin. Though at the moment, if we want to start VPCS from within GNS3... We'll hit the problem rednectar mentioned in this post - p18785
Are the plans to still search all the paths in the PATH variable?

_________________
Daniel
Forum Moderator & Debian Package Maintainer for GNS3, Dynamips & VPCS.
Standalone DEB Packages are available from http://gns3.serverb.co.uk - To be updated!