This is a sample/proof of concept for installing Packet Tracer on a server and provide remote access to the users.
Cisco and/or the author of the script does NOT provide support.
Cisco Packet Tracer is an innovative and powerful networking simulation tool used for practice, discovery and troubleshooting. The Packet Tracer is available to all netacad.com user. This script will not provide you the installer of Packet Tracer, you can get a copy by registering the free "Introduction to Packet Tracer" course at https://www.netacad.com/courses/packet-tracer get a copy of the software and learn the basic features of Packet Tracer.
- NetAcad Instructor Contributors: Bernadette Obrien, Dan Foss, Denis Huffman, Elaine Horn, Gay Berryman,Paul Fedele, Sandy Thomaschek, Scott Stephenson, Steve Stiles
- NetAcad product team: Farsheed Tari, Giuseppe Cinque, Jozef Janitor, Kang Liu
- NetAcad field team: Clydene Stangvik, Jessie Pagan, Marie Zwickert, Rebecca Chisolm
- NetAcad technical field team: Echo Rantanen
The script was tested on Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS server.
To install on your server, the server should have
- Minimal memory: 1G
- Recommanded memory: 4G or more
- Minimal storage: 15G
Copy the "install.sh" script and "PacketTracer_731_amd64.deb" into the same folder.
By default, the docker containers will be installed in "/var/lib/docker", the default web page and the nginx configuration file will be installed into the "ptweb-vnc" sub-folder where you copied the installation script.
You can get a copy of the Packet Tracer and learn the basic features by registering the free "Introduction to Packet Tracer" course at
https://www.netacad.com/courses/packet-tracer
Run "chmod +x install.sh" then run "./install.sh" and follow the instruction, then it will download and install the packages required.
Other than the Docker, the following applications will be installed as container:
- Apache Guacamole
- Apache Tomcat
- MariaDB
- Nginx
- Cisco Packet Tracer
The web page and configuration for the page can be found from a sub folder inside your installation file folder. The ptweb.conf is the configuration file, the files in "www" folder are the default sample homepage.
ptweb-vnc
└── pt-nginx
├── conf
│ └── ptweb.conf
└── wwwHIGHLY SUGGEST CHANGE THE PASSWORD OF THE DEFAULT USERS!
Admin username: ptadmin
Default admin password: IlovePT
Users: pt01 (pt02-pt10 also avaiable)
Default password: 123Login with the admin user, goto the pulldown menu on the top right and click Settings Click the "Users" tab, and choose the user from the list and modify the password and other settings. In case if you break something, the default setting can be restored with the following command: (go to the installation folder first)
sudo docker exec -i guacamole-mariadb mysql -uptdbuser -pptdbpass < ptweb-vnc/db-dump.sqlUse the following command to copy the file into the container:
(use ptvnc1 as example, please change it to the actual container name that you need to copy the files into)
sudo docker cp <source file> ptvnc1:/home/ptuser/Desktop/to copy the files from the container, use the following command:
(Assume the file is saved on Desktop)
sudo docker cp ptvnc1:/home/ptuser/Desktop/<filename> .You can consider mount a folder into the docker and give access to the user. For more details: https://docs.docker.com/storage/bind-mounts/ Please feel free to modify the script and make it work for you.
After login to the Apache Guacamole, press the shortcut key "Ctrl+Alt+Shift", a window will popup on the left side of the screen. Then you can use the Clipboard to copy texts into and from the remote session. To logout, click the username on the top right of the popup window, then click Logout. Users content will stay, they can resume the work after login again.
Some container may not start due to various reasons, including but not limit to the sequence of startup, high CPU load and limited available memory.
Workaround:
Check which docker did not start and start it manually with the following steps:
use "sudo docker ps -a" to check if all the dockers are running
Sample Output:
#docker ps -a
CONTAINER ID IMAGE COMMAND CREATED STATUS PORTS NAMES
d3af8c36dff4 nginx "nginx -g 'daemon of…" 6 minutes ago Exited (255) 5 minutes ago 0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp pt-nginx1
182da42ee992 guacamole/guacamole "/opt/guacamole/bin/…" 6 minutes ago Exited (255) 5 minutes ago 8080/tcp pt-guacamole
cfd1e9630003 guacamole/guacd "/bin/sh -c '/usr/lo…" 6 minutes ago Up 5 minutes 4822/tcp pt-guacd
1f605ebfa2dd ptvnc "/start" 7 minutes ago Up 5 minutes ptvnc10
63ff68c02527 ptvnc "/start" 7 minutes ago Up 5 minutes ptvnc9
fd506a1f16b5 ptvnc "/start" 7 minutes ago Up 5 minutes ptvnc8
af505c45adf5 ptvnc "/start" 7 minutes ago Up 5 minutes ptvnc7
79bb270cdb71 ptvnc "/start" 7 minutes ago Up 5 minutes ptvnc6
f2694744219a ptvnc "/start" 8 minutes ago Up 5 minutes ptvnc5
8f2213b31511 ptvnc "/start" 8 minutes ago Up 5 minutes ptvnc4
d3aecc321e67 ptvnc "/start" 8 minutes ago Up 5 minutes ptvnc3
2fdff69bed34 ptvnc "/start" 8 minutes ago Up 5 minutes ptvnc2
6b15fed09a37 ptvnc "/start" 8 minutes ago Up 5 minutes ptvnc1
1f4fdbb8fdf8 mariadb:latest "docker-entrypoint.s…" 8 minutes ago Up 5 minutes 3306/tcp guacamole-mariadbIn this example, the first 2 docker did not start, then you can start them manually with the following command "sudo docker start ", for example:
sudo docker start pt-guacamole
sudo docker start pt-nginx1In case if student have problem with the container assigned, you can restart the container with the following command: (use ptvnc1 as an example, please change it to the actual container name that have a problem)
sudo docker restart ptvnc1If the command above still can not solve the problem, you can recreate it with the following commands: (CAUTION: this will delete all the files stored inside the container)
sudo docker stop ptvnc1
sudo docker rm ptvnc1
sudo docker run -d --name ptvnc1 --restart unless-stopped --cpus=0.1 -m 512M --kernel-memory 64M --oom-kill-disable --ulimit nproc=512 --ulimit nofile=1024:1024 ptvnc