[Hallc] Hall A & C Analysis Workshop - Virtual Machine setup

[Ole Hansen]

Dear colleague,

below are more details about the setup of the virtual machine software
for participants of Monday's/Tuesday's Hall A & C Analysis Workshop.

For you to be able to participate in the live, hands-on exercises that
are part of many (but not all) of the presentations, you will need to
bring you own laptop. The system requirements are fairly modest;
essentially any modern laptop will do:

- Windows 7 or above, MacOS X 10.9 or above, or various Linux
distributions (e.g. Ubuntu, Fedora). The OS *must be 64-bit*.
- At least 3.5 GB of memory. 8 GB recommended.
- Any number of CPU cores, but at least two are recommended. I think an
Intel processor is required.
- A USB 2 or 3 port available. USB 3 strongly recommended.
- About 35 GB of hard disk space if you want to copy our virtual machine
image to your laptop (not required)

Please download and install VirtualBox 5.1 (the *64-bit version*!) from

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

on your laptop before the meeting. More details on the host system
requirements are here

https://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch01.html#hostossupport

You do not need the "Extension Pack" or "Software Developer Kit".

We will distribute USB drives at the beginning of the workshop that will
contain a VirtualBox image with all necessary software and data files.
Versions of VirtualBox older than 5.1 will probably not work with our image.

You might want to test your installation beforehand. You can either
create a small VM (any OS) yourself following the extensive
documentation on the VirtualBox web site or you can download and run a
preview copy of the VM that we will distribute at the meeting. This
preview copy can be found on the JLab CUE machines here:

/group/halla/analysis/ole/CentOS7_VM.tar.xz

This 3.5 GB archive will occupy about 12 GB of space when unpacked. Once
unpacked, you can start the machine by double-clicking on the "CentOS
7.vbox" file in your file manager, or manually "Add" the machine from
the VirtualBox GUI. Once loaded, click on "Start" in the GUI. If CentOS
7 boots up successfully to the login prompt for "Workshop Participant",
you are all set. The password is "hallac".

We are looking forward to seeing you Monday.

Best regards,
Ole Hansen