Tweaking Cisco ACS V5.2 to work within Oracle VirtualBox

Hi All

I wanted to setup ACS in my virtual environment but didn't have a copy of any paid VMWARE products so I persevered and managed to get the ACS fully working with Oracle Virtual Box.

What you need;

1.     A copy of 'Cisco ACS V5.2 Any Server Edition'

2.    CD/DVD Software tool used to Extract, Modify and Create ISO Image – for step 'Modifying the ISO'. This will also need a boot loader extracter.

3.     Oracle Virtual Box

4.     An Operating System

Modifying the ISO

Extracting, Modify and recreating the ISO image. You can skip this and try to make a 61GB VDI but I didn't want to use that much disk space so this is why I completed this step. It does take a lot of effort.

1.     Save 'Boot Image using MagicIso'

2.     Extract contents of ISO using MagicIso into a directory of your choice.

3.     Open KS.CFG file within root of ISO image within extracted files.

4.     Modify this line [ "$sum"-ge 60] and change 60 to 10. Do not make any other changes and save the file

5.     Create New Bootable Data DVD and use 'Boot Image' which was saved earlier.
6.   Import files which were previously extracted in Step 2.
7.   Save ISO

Creating the Virtual Box

1.     Click New within VirtualBox Manager and use the following settings;

2.     Name: ACS V5.2

3.     OS: Linux

4.     Version: Other Linux

5.     Memory: 1377MB

6.     14GB Hard Drive (or 61GB if ISO not modified)

7.     Modifying the Virtual Machine Properties

Modifying the Virtual Box Properties

1.     Right click Properties of Virtual Machine ACS V5.2 and apply following settings

2.     System / Processor Section - Tick 'Enable PAE/NX'. If you do not do this an error may appear during boot stating 'INVALID IRQ'.

3.     Storage - Ensure your VDI's in the IDE Controller section of the Storage Tree. If not, remove all storage Controllers and click the plus icon for Adding New Storage Controller's and select IDE (it should be the only icon click-able under the Storage Tree. Once you have done this, select the controller name and Add the VDI.

Booting the ACS V5.2

1.  Boot your new ACSVirtual Machine, and mount the new ISO image and follow instructions. It is a bit slow at booting but it will boot eventually. It looks like it hangs on 'ip_conntrack version 2.4 (8192 buckets, 65536 max) - 188 bytes per conntrack',but it’s just booting.

I would love you hear how you get on and whether this was any help to you.

Anyhow, good luck!

Moved to Microsoft NPS... Offers similar features to the ACS.