Software setup

Overview

Teaching: 10 min
Exercises: 10 min
Questions
  • What software do I need?

Objectives
  • Get all the necessary software installed before beginning the lessons

File download (DO BEFORE ARRIVING)

For the workshop you will need to download a large (~10 GB) .ova file which contains the virtual machine (VM) that we will be using. Because of it’s large size it’s important to download it before the workshop.

To download it use:

curl -O  "ftp://elwood.ru.ac.za/pub/geyer/NWU_pulsartiming/virtual_box/pulsarVM.ova"

or if you don’t have curl installed you can use wget:

wget ftp://elwood.ru.ac.za/pub/geyer/NWU_pulsartiming/virtual_box/pulsarVM.ova

Assumed knowledge

This course assumes that you have basic proficiency with the command line / bash terminal, a text editor and simple Python scripting. If you are unfamiliar with any of these concepts, we recommend the following tutorials:

Installing VirtualBox

To make the software installation easier we are going to use a virtual machine (VM) that has all the required software preinstalled. We will run the VM using VirtualBox which is a tool for managing and running VMs. To install, follow the instructions in here which contains detailed instructions. The following sections will will summarize how to install on common systems. If you have an issue refer to the full instructions on the website or email Nick (nswainston@swin.edu.au)

Windows

Download the .exe file from this link and follow the setup instructions.

Linux (Ubuntu 22.04)

How to install is OS dependent so there are more details instructions here. Here is an example of how to install it for Ubuntu 22.04 by downloading the .deb and installing it with apt:

wget https://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/7.0.10/virtualbox-7.0_7.0.10-158379~Ubuntu~jammy_amd64.deb
sudo apt install ./virtualbox-7.0_7.0.10-158379~Ubuntu~jammy_amd64.deb

Using Virtual Box

Once you have VirtualBox installed you can open it to open the .ova file that you downloaded earlier:

VirtualBox tips and FAQ

VirtualBox can be a bit confusing at first so here are a few tips:

Key Points

  • How to install software