Introduction
This document explains how to jump-start the analysis environment on a laptop using a virtual machine (VM) image. The recipe would work as well for any other hardware (desktop, server). In this document we're exploring a technology based on Oracle VM VirtualBox. The main benefit of the software is that it's stable and it's free. Besides, it's easy to set up. The software is available for all popular platforms, including Linux (all distributions), Windows 7/8, MacOS, or Solaris. However a similar approach would work as well for other hypervisors, such as Parallels, VMware, etc. They all would recognize a format of the packaged VM images which we're exporting here.
Preparing your computer to host virtual images
The first step before downloading anything is to make sure your CPU has a hardware support for the virtualization technology. This is known as VT-x on Intel CPUs or AMD-V on the AMD CPUs. All modern CPUs built over the last 5 years should have it. But you would better check if the one you have. Each operating system has the corresponding tool which would tell you this information. Here is how this can be done on some of the systems:
Linux:
% cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep 'model name' .. model name : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5520 @ 2.27GHz ..
Windows 7:
Windows Vista/8:
MacOS:
Then you will need to cross check the model with the CPU manufacturer. Normally, all Intel CPU's after Core 2 Duo will support the virtualization.
The next step is to make sure that the virtualization technology is enabled in the machine's BIOS. In many cases it may be disabled. Unfortunately, we can't give you any specific advise on how to do so for your particular computer because BIOS implementations (and user interfaces) vary from one computer to another. The best approach here is to read the Owner's Manual of your computer to figure it out. Note that the VirtualBox will fail to start if the technology is not enabled/available on your machine.
Now you should be ready to set up the Oracle VM VirtualBox software on your machine. You need to download an installer which matches your operating system (not the virtual images which are distributing!). Please, make clear distinction between your host operating system and the guest operating system of the virtual images. You may need to explore the technology by reading articles on this subject (like Virtual Machines on Wikipedia) which are available on the Internet.
Downloading and setting up a virtual image
The virtual images can be downloaded from the following location:
We suggest using the latest analysis release. You can find a list of most recent releases in the Release Notes. Note that not all of them would be packaged into the virtual images. Also note that not all platforms which we generally support at LCLS may be represented in the above mentioned collection of virtual images. And for well known reasons we can't redistribute images based on RHEL because this is a proprietary Linux distribution.Instead of that we replace RHEL systems with the corresponding versions of the CentOS distribution.
The next step is to download an image of your choice onto a machine where you have previously installed the Oracle VirtualBox software. Virtual image files will have the .ova extension. The OVA files correspond to the Open Virtualization Format which is meant to be used by the virtualization solution manufactures to exchange virtual images. Then you will need to start the VirtualBox GUI and import the VM Applience
Testing and using the installed machine
Accounts, passwords
Final notes
The default configuration of the virtual machine won't allow external login into the machine (one can'e do 'ssh' into the system). However, it's possible to
Overview
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