Hardware prerequisites

The host machine must have at least 2 GBytes of memory and 8 GBytes free disk space.

Software prerequisites

Linux (redhat5 kernel at least; more recent is better), MacOS and various flavors of Windows are all acceptable host operating systems. Additionally you'll need virtualization software: something which allows you to start and stop the appliance and adjust its configuration. Since VirtualBox is the application being used to create the appliances, that's what we recommend for users.

Installing VirtualBox

Simply go to the VirtualBox downloads page and download the binary version appropriate for your host OS.  See chapter 2 of the User's Manual for installation instructions. Next install the Guest Additions, aka Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack, also found on VirtualBox downloads page. Once you've downloaded it, just double-click on the file (which will have extension vbox-extpack) and you will be guided through the installation. It features much-improved mouse-sharing between host and VM and the ability to share folders.

Installing the VM

  1. Download your VM appliance of choice, e.g. SL5-32min-v3.ova for "bare bones". Available VMs are described on the page GlastRelease Virtual Machines . 
  2. Bring up the VirtualBox gui
  3. Type ctrl-I or click on the "Import Appliance.." item in the File menu and follow instructions.  You will have a chance to modify characteristics of the machine at this time, but you can do it later just as well. We recommend you leave it as is to start with.
  4. Start the new VM by selecting it and clicking on the green arrow. It will take a couple minutes to boot up.
  5. Click on the Devices menu and select "Install Guest Additions.."
  6. Shut down the machine (from the System menu select "Shutdown").
  7. Restart.
  8. Log in. The VM comes with two standard accounts:  lat (password latuser) and root (password latroot).  In normal circumstances, including this case, use lat.
  9.  Among the icons on your desktop should be one that looks like a CD and has a name something like VBOXADDITIONS_4.1.18_78361.
  10. The Guest Additions might not be operational yet.  If it is operational, the console will probably be larger than the first time you brought up the machine. You can tell for sure by mouse behavior. If, after you do something in the VM like bring up a terminal window, the mouse seems to be "trapped" inside the VM, the Guest Additions are not fully installed.  If so, you can free the mouse for use in a host machine window by pressing the key (by default Right Ctrl key) whose name appears in the lower right corner of the VM window.
    1. To finish installing Guest Additions, double click on the VBOXADDITIONS icon, then on autorun.sh.  
    2. Another dialog box will come up.  Click "Run in Terminal".
    3. If you're not already root, you will be prompted for the root password.  The resulting output should look like this .
    4. Log out and log back in. 

For older versions of Bare-bones (before v3) you might need to install cvs and scons.  Check by bringing up a terminal window and typing "which cvs". if the response is "Command not found" you need to install it, and similarly for scons.  To install them

  1. log in as root or su to root.
  2. For cvs you only need to issue one command
    1. yum install cvs
  3. For scons issue the following commands
    1. wget  http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/scons/scons-2.1.0.tar.gz
    2. tar zxf scons-2.1.0.tar.gz
    3. cd scons-2.1.0
    4. python setup.py install
    5. cd ..
    6. rm -rf scons-2.1.0

Using the VM

Once you've logged in as lat look at the file glastSetup.sh. It describes what you need to do to use cvs from the VM. If you are using GR standard it also sets up some useful environment variables, such as GLAST_EXT.

Shared folders (requires install of Guest Additions)

Shared folders can help to keep down the size of the VM's disk (e.g., use a single local copy of calibration archive for both host and guest) and also can simplify communication between host and guest. Shared folders can be read-only for the guest or read/write. They can be transient or permanent.

Where did it go?

If you use the GUI to set up an auto-mounted shared folder on your Linux guest, it ends up in the /media directory with prefix sf_. For example, if you wish to share the host machine folder /scratch/myFolder, on the guest it will show up as /media/sf_myFolder.

See section 4.3 of the VirtualBox user manual for a complete discussion of shared folders.

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