Proxmox Mikrotik CHR on zfs
Setting up a mikrotik CHR on proxmox
Pre-requisites
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apt install unzip
Create VM
- OS:
- Do not use any media
- OS Type: Linux (6.x - 2.6 Kernel)
- System:
- Machine: q35
- Disks:
- ZFS storage of appropriate size (must be greater than 64MB for v6 and 128MB for v7).
- If you want to partition the disk specify how much you want the mikrotik OS to use and then start it as it resizes to fill the disk on first boot. You can then resize the disk to the full size you want and add your extra partitions after. This does not apply to adding a 2nd or more disks, only if you want to partition the primary.
- Note the disk ID (for the first disk it will be zero).
- CPU:
- Cores: 2+
- Memory:
- 128MiB+ (as appropriate to what you want to use).
- Ballooning Device:
- Network:
- VLAN Tag as appropriate
- Done
- Note the VM ID assigned.
Commands to write the image
The VM will have an ID that proxmox assigns it to find the ZFS volume name do zfs list -t volume, the output will look something like this:
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NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
rpool/data/vm-102-disk-0 4.14G 135G 4.14G -
tank/vm-100-disk-0 25.3G 713G 25.3G -
tank/vm-100-disk-1 120K 713G 120K -
tank/vm-100-disk-2 64K 713G 64K -
tank/vm-101-disk-0 25.1G 713G 25.1G -
tank/vm-103-disk-0 5.55G 713G 5.55G -
tank/vm-104-disk-0 27.1G 713G 27.1G -
tank/vm-105-disk-0 8.28G 713G 8.28G -
tank/vm-106-disk-0 16.7G 713G 16.7G -
tank/vm-111-disk-0 35.3G 713G 35.3G -
tank/vm-112-disk-0 14.4G 713G 14.4G -
tank/vm-113-disk-0 24.9G 713G 24.9G -
tank/vm-114-disk-0 3.58G 713G 3.58G -
tank/vm-115-disk-0 56K 713G 56K -
Where the format is <zpool or dataset>/vm-<vm id>-disk-<disk id>, note the dataset can be a sub-folder.
Download and unpack image
If you are downloading manually or copying the latest image’s URL from https://mikrotik.com/download this is the “Raw disk image”.
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wget https://download.mikrotik.com/routeros/7.19.4/chr-7.19.4.img.zip
unzip chr-7.19.4.img.zip
You can then verify the disk image using qemu-img info chr-7.19.4.img (filename without the .zip):
For v7+ images you will see something similar to the following:
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image: chr-7.19.4.img
file format: raw
virtual size: 128 MiB (134217728 bytes)
disk size: 40.4 MiB
Child node '/file':
filename: chr-7.19.4.img
protocol type: file
file length: 128 MiB (134217728 bytes)
disk size: 40.4 MiB
For v6 images you should see something similar to the following:
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image: chr-6.49.13.img
file format: raw
virtual size: 64 MiB (67108864 bytes)
disk size: 33 MiB
Child node '/file':
filename: chr-6.49.13.img
protocol type: file
file length: 64 MiB (67108864 bytes)
disk size: 33 MiB
From the above qemu output the minimum disk sizes specified in the create VM section should make sense (virtual size), if this increases in future images you will need to adjust the minimum accordingly.
Write the image to the ZFS disk
Now write the mikrotik image to the ZFS disk (substituting the appropriate downloaded image for if= and the zfs path prefixed by /dev/zvol/ for of=):
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dd if=chr-6.49.13.img of=/dev/zvol/tank/vm-103-disk-0 bs=1M
or
dd if=chr-7.19.4.img of=/dev/zvol/rpool/data/vm-102-disk-0 bs=1M
Which should lead to output similar to the following:
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128+0 records in
128+0 records out
134217728 bytes (134 MB, 128 MiB) copied, 0.400068 s, 335 MB/s
- The mikrotik OS will resize itself to fill the primary disk when it first boots.
- The default username and password is admin /
for both v6 and v7. - v7 will force you to change the password on first login.
- Once the first boot happens you can move storage to your hearts content (to ceph, iSCSI, etc).
References
- https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/import-convert-export-raw-images-to-zfs-volume.21241/
- https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/migrate-qcow2-or-raw-images-to-zfs-volume.44966/