Cisco VIRL Status? Digital Paper Weight

Update: I fixed the issue. Turns out, I’m a dim wit. There is an updated post, with tips and lessons learned, here.

I was excited that VIRL was finally released. On impulse, I went ahead and bought it, even though I thought it was a little pricey. So far, I haven’t had any luck with it. It appears that I’m not the only one.

For my install, I chose bare-metal, as I had the computer to spare. The install is a little clunky, but I worked my way through it. Udev changed the designated eth0 device to p3p1, which I’m used to and made the necessary changes in /etc/network/interfaces. After the install, you’re supposed to configure NTP and activate the VIRL instance with Cisco’s salt infrastructure. This is where the rub comes in. No matter what I do or try, I can’t get it to register.

I’ve configured NTP - and verified that I had a proper NTP association per these two support threads:

• Activation Error
• VIRL Time and NTP Requirements

I’ve verified that my VIRL instance can ping the Cisco salt infrastructure. I can also telnet to their service ports. From my view. It should be working, but no matter what I do, I get this screen:

I’m also a little irritated with the VIRL support forums, as I can’t post this screen shot, because I’m a ‘new users’. The best that I can do is link to it.

If you know what I may be doing wrong - or if you know of a fix, shoot me a DM on twitter.