PNETLAB - HOW TO INSTALL and HOW TO USE

Hello Everyone,

I would like to introduce a tool for building lab simulators in the fields of Networking, Security, and System, PNETLAB is a tool to allows you to create virtual environment similar to those used in real company infrastructures, making it useful for experimenting or learning about Network, Security and System Technology.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to install pnetlab for a home lab environment and how to download device images using iShare2, a tool that makes it super easy to add new node or devices for lab simulations in PNETLAB.

There are two methods to install PNETLAB:

Download the OVA file and import it into VMware Workstation.
Install Ubuntu 20.04 in VMware, then install PNETLAB manually on top of it.

In this guide, we’ll go with method one. First, download the PNETLab OVA File [HERE], you can choose the PNETLAB version from the PNETLAB Drive [HERE], for this tutorial, I’ll be using PNETLAB v5.3.13.

Once you’ve downloaded the OVA file, open VMware and click the “file” menu, then choose “Open…”.

Open your PNETLAB OVA file.

Give your Virtual Machine a name and choose a folder location for storing the VM files(include the disk).

The import process wil now begin.

Once the import is complete, click “Edit virtual machine settings” to adjust the VM specifications based on your lab needs—such as RAM and CPU.

Make sure to Checklist “Virtualize Inter … or AMD ….”, this option is Mandatory, as it allows VMware to support virtualization inside the PNETLAB VM(nested virtualization).

When adjusting the specs, make sure to consider your PC or Laptop’s total resources. A good rule of thumb is to allocate around 60-70% of your total RAM and CPU to the VM. Avoid assigning more than 80%, as it could make your system slow or unresponsive when running other applications like browser or terminal emulator.

Once you’re done with the settings, go ahead and power on the VM.

Once VM has finished booting, you can connect to it using SSH from your terminal emulator.

As shown in VMware, you can SSH to the IP Address “192.168.93.133” using the username “root” password “pnet”.

After you entering the password, the server will ask to finish pnetlab setup, first setup root password, you can either keep using “pnet” or set a new password, just make sure to enter it twice to confirm.

Next, you’ll be asked to enter a DNS domain name, can leave it as is.

Choose DHCP for the IP configuration. However, if you plan to install additional VMs in VMware, it’s recommended to use a static IP to avoid IP Changes.

Enter a NTP server address, this is optional, but useful if you want accurate time sync.

Then, choose Direct Connection if your physical host is direct connected to the internet and doesn’t need a proxy server.

After completing these steps, the VM will automatically reboot.

Once the reboot is complete, refresh your terminal and reconnect. The Installation is now finished, and you can access the PNETLAB web interface by entering the IP of pnet0 interface in browser.

You’ll then be asked to choose between Online or Offline mode:

Online mode allows you to download labs shared by other users from the PNETLab cloud.
Offline mode is best if you want to work locally without downloading labs from the cloud.

You can start with Offline mode.

Username: admin
Password: pnet

Now PNETLAB v5.3.13 is installed and ready to use.

Now we will download and install a node using ishare2. First, update the ishare2 using the command below:

wget -O /usr/sbin/ishare2 https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pnetlabrepo/ishare2/main/ishare2 > /dev/null 2>&1 && chmod +x /usr/sbin/ishare2 && ishare2

After running the command, follow the setup instruction shown in the prompt (refer to the capture below if needed).

Once the setup is completed, ishare2 is ready to use. You can type “ishare2 –help” to see available commands.

In this example, we’ll install a FortiGate device in PNETLAB, start by searching for fortigate images using the following command :

ishare2 search forti

This will list available fortinet images along with their IDs. To download one, use the following command:

ishare2 pull qemu [ID]

In my case, I used

ishare pull qemu 522 –-overwrite

I added “–overwrite” because I had already pulled the same image before, and it didn’t work properly until I upgrade ishare2, so, I need to replace the existing image.