psana virtual machine

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:

• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/view-cpu-utilization-performance-information#1TC=windows-7

Windows Vista/8:

• http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-vista/find-your-computers-processor-speed

MacOS:

• http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1633

Lookup your CPU model on a Web site of 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!) directly from Oracle. 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.

Once you're done with installing the VirtualBox itself then you will also need to install Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack. This software will upgrade your installation with a number of useful extensions. After rebooting your system you should be ready to proceed to the next step of downloading and using our virtual images. However, before you may want to read the documentation on the VirtualBox itself. There are many aspects of setting and managing VirtualBox which we wouldn't even touch in this document. We're assuming it has to be up to you to get yourself familiar with the technology. The present document covers only basic steps needed to set up and run our images. The virtualization software has many other potentially interesting settings which you may (eventually) find useful for you.

Downloading and setting up a virtual image

The virtual images can be downloaded from the following location:

• http://pswww.slac.stanford.edu/psdm-vm/

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 image. Here are the steps:

1. start VirtualBox
2. locate the 'File' menu on the top left corner of the application's GUI
3. select menu option 'Import Appliance'
4. follow instructions suggested by the GUI on where to locate the file which you have just downloaded

It will take a few minutes for VirtualBox to "digest" the file. The software will read, unpack the input file and place the actual image (along with additional support files) some where on your file system. The actual location can be changes through one of the configuration option of the VirtualBox application. When the process is done then you should see the VM the GUI. Here is an example:

Note that the initial state of the machine will be "Powered Off".

Testing and using the installed machine

Accounts, passwords

There is an important thing you need to know about the security of your machine. The machine comes with two predefined accounts:

• root
• pcds

% sudio -i
..

Starting/stopping

By default, after you start the machine, the network connection will not be enable on the VM. You shall locate the following sign on the title bar on the top right corner of the machine's GUI:

Which software is installed

Basically, we've tried to replicate the usual analysis environment, including the names of releases, a location of the release, the environment initialization commands (sit_setup), etc. And each VM image comes with at least one version of the full analysis release. There are some important exceptions though. In particular:

• you won't be able to see your NFS home directory even if you will add your own account to the system using your sudo privilege
• all accounts found on the machine have nothing to do with LCLS accounts

ddd

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 give you machine a unique IP address to allow the logins. Instructions can be found in the VirtualBox documentation. And make sure you change the default passwords of both root and pcds accounts in your virtual image.
• Please, read the documentation on VirtualBox