SCEC-ERI Workshop Software

SCEC will deliver the software to be used in the SCEC-ERI Workshop Software as a Virtual Box Image. We are distributing the software this way to make it easier for researchers to install the three main software packages (SCEC-VDO, UCVM, and BBP) on their own computers. The following information describes how to install the SCEC-ERI workshop software on your own computer.

Overview

SCEC is using Virtual Box technology to make it easy to run scientific software designed for Linux computers to be run on a variety of personal computers. Virtual Box provides a way to run Linux-based software on Mac computer and Windows computers. Virtual Box also enables SCEC to install and configure software so that all students have a similar computing environment.

Terminology

Here are a few terms that might be used when working with Virtual Box.

• Host operating system
  • The host operating system is the software on your laptop. If you are using a Mac, your host operating system will probably be some version of OS X. If you are using Windows, your host operating system will probably be some version of Windows 7 or 8.

• Guest Operating system
  • The guest operating system is the version of linux that runs inside the Virtual Box. For the ERI workshop, the guest operating system will be Linux Fedora 13.x. We selected this as the guest operating system because all three of SCEC applications run well on this version of Linux.

• Image
  • An image is a large file, like a tar file, that contains both the guest operating system, and the seismological applications programs that will be used in the workshop. SCEC has collected the software, and created an image, and posted the image online. Users download the image, load the image into Virtual Box, and all the applications will be available for use. An image behaves like a standalone computer, once the image is installed and started inside Virtual Box. To use an image, you must know a username and password for logging into the computer. Please check with SCEC coordinators to get the username and password for logging into the ERI images.

Computer Requirements

For the SCEC-ERI workshop, we have tested the Virtual Box, and our SCEC-ERI software images in the following computer configurations. If you wish to run the SCEC-ERI workshop image, your computer should have the following capabilities.

• Mac OS or Windows 7 or Windows 8
• 50GB Disk space available
• Three button Mouse - We recommend a three button mouse to help with SCEC-VDO navigation.

Obtain Virtual Box

The first step is to download the Virtual Box software from Oracle. This software is free to use. You must retrieve a version that is appropriate for the Host Operating system of the computer you want to use. If your laptop runs Mac OS X, then retrieve a version of Virtual Box for Mac OS X. If your laptop runs Windows 8, retrieve a version of Virtual Box for Windows 8. We have tested the SCEC-ERI Image with Virtual Box Version 4.2.24 and higher.

• Oracle Virtual Box Software
• Downloads Page

Install Virtual Box

Follow the Virtual Box installation instructions and install Virtual Box on your computer.

• Virtual Box Users Manual

Retrieve ERI Workshop Image

Download the SCEC ERI Workshop Image from a SCEC Website. Current ERI Images are about 12GB in size, so it may take minutes to hours to download these files, depending on your network connection.

• SCEC-ERI Image v14.9.17 (~12GB - Updated 17 Sept 2014)

Import ERI Image into Virtual Box

1. On your laptop, start up Virtual Box.
2. From the Virtual Box top menu selection, select File. A drop down menu list should appear.
3. From this list select "Import Appliance"
4. Select the file folder icon, to bring up a file browser. Browse to the ERI virtual Box image you have downloaded.
5. Select Okay

Virtual Box will now read in your image. This may take minutes to hours depending on the speed of your computer and disk space available.

Define a Shared Folder

To transfer files in and out of the Virtual Box, you must configure a shared folder. If start the SCECCME image before defining a shared folder, you will receive a warning about the shared folder as the image starts to run. To avoid this warning message, you can define the shared folder before you start the image for the first time.

• Begin with the virtual box running and the SCEC CME image loaded, but in the "powered off" state. This should be visible in the virtual box left panel.
• Point to the SCEC CME virtual image, and right click your mouse. A drop down menu appears.
• From the drop down menu, select Settings. A configuration window appears.
• Across the top of the "settings" configuration window. Click on a far right Icon called Shared Folders. A new window appears to show Machine folders and a drop down menu that says "shared /Users/fsilva/work/share"
• Select the middle icon to edit this path.

Start up ERI Image

• Your Virtual Box menu should know show icon "SCEC CME" Powered Off.
• From the top level, select the green arrow "Start"
• Watch as the Virtual Box appears to boot a Linux Computer in the Virtual Box Window

Remove *.ova File

Once Virtual Box has read in the SCEC-ERI Workshop Image (which is distributed as a *.ova file) you can delete the *.ova file from outside the virtual box. This step in not necessary, but it will free up disk space from your computer.

Log In as User CME

• When the ERI image has booted, you are presented with a Linux user login screen. We have prepared a USER "CME". Please check with coordinators for the password. Log in with the username password.

Running SCEC Applications

You can now work in the virtual box as if you are working on a Linux computer. Double click on the SCEC-VDO icon to run SCEC-VDO. Double click on the terminal window to start-up a command line terminal to run UCVM or BBP

Related Entries

• SCEC-ERI Workshop 2014
• Broadband Platform
• UCVM
• SCEC-VDO