Sunday, August 30, 2009

The 1U Olive

I posted this on Techexams, but I thought I'd add it here.

NOTE: Of course, you can build a VMWare Olive, but I don’t want to use my current machine for that. If that suits your needs, check it out: Building a Juniper 'Olive' running latest JUNOS in VMWare.

Getting back into Juniper has been great so far, most especially because of the Fast Track materials. That stated, I still need to get a little more hands-on with JUNOS. I recently built one Olive already, with a plan to add a couple more eventually. My first Olive is contained in a 4U server rackmount case. That’s a space eater. A good friend of mine with a firewall background (who also is using Fast Track) thought it might be possible to use a 1U Nokia IP330. His company had several they were about to toss, so what the hey right?

Here are the specs:

1U-sized PC appliance
1x AMD K6-2 CPU @400 MHz (i586)
256 MB PC-100 SDRAM
1x 20GB IDE hard drive
3x Intel 82558 Pro/100 Ethernet (fxp(4))
2x RS-232 serial interfaces (DB-9 male) with BIOS-level serial console

You can find similar ones here:
nokia IP330, great deals on Computers Networking on eBay!

1. I had to connect the Hard Drive from the IP330 to my first Olive (in place of the current working HD). The IDE port on the IP330 motherboard has an extra pin which prevented me from connecting a standard IDE cable with master and slave connectors for dual use of the HD and CD ROM.

2. I installed FreeBSD mini 4.4 per Sid Smokes.
Juniper Olive Install: Juniper Olive has more granular instructions for basic *nix folks like myself. These sites also contain the instructions for loading JUNOS. Note: For my initial installation I used jinstall-7.4R1.7-export-signed.tgz and I upgraded to jinstall-8.3R2.8-export-signed. I don’t have enough RAM to upgrade to jinstall-9.x …yet.


3. When the install of FreeBSD completed (and rebooted), I logged in as root to complete the file system changes. I then mounted the cdrom and copied the jninstall to the /var/temp (as per the above instructions).

4. I then ran the pkg_add command. Once that completes a "reboot" will need to be issued. (This is normal so far). After I issued the "reboot" the machine began to reboot (of course). When it powered down, and before it powered up, I manually turned off the power to that machine.

5. I removed the drive, and re-installed it in the IP330. I connected the power cable, then a null-modem cable to the console port and booted the IP330 up. Null modem cables can be found here: RS-232 Null Modem, great deals on Computers Networking, Electronics on eBay!

6. It took about 15 minutes, more or less, for the IP330 to boot all the way up to the login prompt. I did see the following error (you may see several, but I was concerned only about this one):

fxp: Could not derive MAC address from EEPROM
fxp0: Ethernet address 02:00:02:00:00:04
fxp: Could not derive MAC address from EEPROM
fxp1: Ethernet address 02:00:03:00:00:04
fxp: Could not derive MAC address from EEPROM
fxp2: Ethernet address 02:00:04:00:00:04

While probably not an issue for only one IP330 Olive, all of my IP330 Olives assigned a dummy MAC address (of 02:00:0X:00:00:04) to the respective fxp ports on each Olive. You can manually change the MAC address to avoid duplicates:

jnpr@OLIVE1# set interfaces fxp0 mac ?
Possible completions:
Hardware MAC address
[edit].

I was able to easily assign an IP, configure telnet/hostname/1 superuser, and telnet
from my machine.

Here's what fxp0 looks like:

jnpr@OLIVE2# run show interfaces fxp0
Physical interface: fxp0, Enabled, Physical link is Up
Interface index: 1, SNMP ifIndex: 1
Type: Ethernet, Link-level type: Ethernet, MTU: 1514, Speed: 100mbps
Device flags : Present Running
Interface flags: SNMP-Traps
Link type : Full-Duplex
Link flags : 4
Current address: 02:00:02:00:00:04, Hardware address: 02:00:02:00:00:04
Last flapped : Never
Input packets : 10
Output packets: 1

Logical interface fxp0.0 (Index 65) (SNMP ifIndex 13)
Flags: SNMP-Traps Encapsulation: ENET2
Protocol inet, MTU: 1500
Flags: Is-Primary
Addresses, Flags: Is-Default Is-Preferred Is-Primary
Destination: 192.168.5/24, Local: 192.168.5.96,
Broadcast: 192.168.5.255

And show version:

jnpr@OLIVE2> show version
Hostname: OLIVE2
Model: olive
JUNOS Base OS boot [8.3R2.8]
JUNOS Base OS Software Suite [8.3R2.8]
JUNOS Kernel Software Suite [8.3R2.8]
JUNOS Packet Forwarding Engine Support (M/T Common) [8.3R2.8]
JUNOS Packet Forwarding Engine Support (M20/M40) [8.3R2.8]
JUNOS Online Documentation [8.3R2.8]
JUNOS Routing Software Suite [8.3R2.8]

jnpr@OLIVE2>


Special shout to 8o8 for the IP330s.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

JNCIA-ER - Part 1.7

Ok. Passed the assessment (see below). I still have two chapters left to read in the OJRE Student Guide. In addition to that and reviewing tabbed notes, I also need to review the J-Web Interface User Guide. If the exam is anything like the assessment, I'll need that to bone up on J-Web. I'll likely complete the OJRE Lab Guide as well.

JNCIA-ER: Pre-assessment Exam

The pre-assessment exam consists of 25 questions designed to prepare you for the proctored exam at a Prometric testing center. At the end of the pre-assessment exam you will be instantly graded; a 70% passing score earns you a discounted voucher ID for the Prometric exam. An e-mail will also be sent to you with your results.



Congratulations! You have passed the JNCIA-ER: Pre-assessment Exam.

Your score was: 80%
Passing score is: 70%

Your voucher ID is: **********
You have earned a discount off your certification exam of 100%

You will receive an e-mail with this information shortly.

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Olive is UP/UP!

The first thing you should know about Olives, is that there are no Olives.
The second thing you should know about Olives, is that there are no Olives.

Ok, so there are several sites/blogs you can use to build an Olive.

Here's what worked for me:
Juniper Olive Install

which seems to piggy back off of Sid Smokes

My network cards were purchased from eBay based on recommendations from JuniperClue.

I used the following code, thereby bypassing the "ELF binary type "0" not known": jinstall-7.4R1.7-export-signed.tgz (no I cannot share a copy).

Though, you should be able to resolve such an error using this or I Can Has IPv6.

The issue I ran into, (that I could not seem to find a resolution for on the www), was the following error:

ERROR: recognize_model: Unable to discover hard drive Issue

=================== Bootstrap installer starting ===================
Initialized the environment
Routing engine model is Olive
Sourcing /sbin/Olive
No harddrive device found!
ERROR: recognize_model: Unable to discover hard drive
You are now in a debugging subshell (you may not see a prompt)...
# Console: serial port
BIOS drive A: is disk0
BIOS drive C: is disk1
BIOS 639kB/228288kB available memory


The resolution was "simple." The HD should have been physically cabled as primary master, and I had it cabled as secondary master. Once I cabled it correctly, I had to reload FreeBSD and the jinstall file from scratch. After that, I was good to go.

Monday, August 10, 2009

JNCIA-ER - Part 1


Well, I was fortunate enough to complete a Juniper JNSSA-ER Virtual Lab Hands-on Training course over the weekend. It is not a JNCIA-ER course, but it was technical and free. Great course. So great, in fact, as Juniper is offering 4 FREE certifications (until year's end) and I have plenty of time on my hands, I have decided to go for them!

I'll blog about my experience here, of course.

First things first. Last night, I took the pre-assessment which allows me to obtain the 100% off voucher from Juniper for the actual exam. There were 25 questions, which I blew through in less than 5 minutes. I just needed to see where I stood, and to get a feel for the questions. The being said, you know what comes next:

We’re sorry. You did not pass the JNCIA-ER: Pre-assessment Exam this time.

Your score was: 24%
Passing score is: 70%


Ouch! LOL They also send you an email letting you know what your status was.


Today, I am working my way through Part 1: JUNOS as a Second Language (JSL) online course (pictured here). Also free. It's excellent. The course is downloadable and does not require installation. It runs inside my Adobe Flash player and it is interactive (to an extent) which allows for 'configuration' of the examples presented in the course. This is simply to give you a basic feel for JUNOS, if you will. It compares and contrasts the differences between Cisco IOS and JUNOS, and walks you through examples of various configurations. You can also compare different pieces of a JUNOS config and compare it to the same config in IOS. Pretty cool.


Friday, August 7, 2009

Free JNCIE-ER Labs...

These are pretty cool...

http://www.techexams.net/forums/juniper-certifications/45576-jncie-er-prep-materials-practice-labs-topology.html



Now all I need are Olives!!!

Juniper Fast Track is Back!

What a nice wallet saver is such a rough economy...

You are on your way to become certified in Juniper Networks Enterprise Routing, Enhanced Security, and Enterprise Switching! You will have access to valuable study materials, and information about scheduling your final exam. Take our pre-assessment exam to earn a 100% off voucher* towards the price of the final exam! Get started today!

* One voucher per person per certification exam through 2009

Juniper Fast Track is Back!

What a nice wallet saver is such a rough economy...

You are on your way to become certified in Juniper Networks Enterprise Routing, Enhanced Security, and Enterprise Switching! You will have access to valuable study materials, and information about scheduling your final exam. Take our pre-assessment exam to earn a 100% off voucher* towards the price of the final exam! Get started today!

* One voucher per person per certification exam through 2009

CCIE Written 4.0 Beta

Though I am preparing for the 3.0 Written, I am seriously considering taking this exam...

Beta Exams

Each written exam version is offered first in beta form at a discounted cost of US$50. Beta exams are scheduled just like other written exams and are available at all worldwide testing locations. A passing grade on the beta qualifies a candidate to schedule the lab exam. Results, however, are typically not available until six to eight weeks after the close of the beta. A candidate may attempt the beta exam only once during the beta period.

Monday, August 3, 2009