This section assumes that you want to build and distribute
a complete Vagrant machine as defined above.
There is not much installed yet on the mybox machine, but
this is an Ubuntu system where we
can very easily install what we want via sudo apt-get install
or pip install commands, or by downloading source code and
performing manual installation.
The section Scripts for installing ready-made packages describes a type of file for listing
packages and Unix commands, with an associated tool deb2sh.py
for automatic generation of installation scripts.
Using these utilities,
it is close to trivial to create a rich computing environment.
Make sure you are logged out of the Vagrant machine (Ctrl-D) and
located in the project directory on the host.
Download default versions of some key files:
deb2sh.py, debpkg_minimal.txt, .bashrc, and .rsyncexclude.
Just click on the files, choose
the Raw version, and right-click to save each file to the project
directory.
Read about the former two files in
the section Scripts for installing ready-made packages and the latter two in
the section Setting up a default environment with .bashrc. Edit the files to your users' needs.
Then run
Terminal> python deb2sh.py debpkg_minimal.txt
to produce a Bash script install_minimal.sh and an equivalent
Python script install_minimal.py.
Make sure you run all the commands in the
project directory (~/vagrant).
You may alternatively download the more comprehensive debpkg.txt
package list and use that file as a starting point. Running deb2sh.py debpkg.txt
will produce the scripts install.sh and install.py.
When you have edited the above files according to your users' needs,
you are ready to log into the Vagrant machine, copy files to the
machine and run the installation.
The project directory is visible as /vagrant inside the Vagrant
machine (see the section Shared directories
for more details). The relevant login command is vagrant ssh, here
followed by two copy commands:
Terminal> vagrant ssh
Machine> cp /vagrant/.bashrc .
Machine> cp /vagrant/.rsyncexclude .
Now you can run the (lengthy) installation process by
Machine> bash /vagrant/install_minimal.sh
or
Machine> python /vagrant/install_minimal.py
If something goes wrong with the installation, edit the script
on the host system (invoke /vagrant/install_minimal.sh in an
editor) and rerun the installation command inside the Vagrant
machine.
You may want to include the installation scripts in the box so that users can see exactly what has been installed and rerun installation commands if necessary (e.g., at a later stage to update the software).
Machine> cp /vagrant/install_minimal.sh .
Machine> cp /vagrant/install_minimal.py .
It is recommended that you test graphics programs and check that they
display the graphics on the host appropriately. To this end, you
need to enable X11 graphics on the host by editing the file Vagrantfile
in the project directory so that it includes the
line config.ssh.forward_x11 = true:
Vagrant::Config.run do |config|
...
# Enable X11
config.ssh.forward_x11 = true
...
end
To get X11 graphics to work, you must also start X11 on the host: run Applications - Utilities - X11 on a Mac, or invoke Start - All Programs - Cygwin-X - XWin Server on Windows.
A simple application just to test X11 is to run xterm from the Vagrant
machine. A terminal window will pop up on the host.
When everything is copied to the box, installed, and tested,
we need to package
the installed virtual environment into a box in order to distribute it to other
users. Log out of the machine and finalize the machine by
running the vagrant package command in the project directory:
Terminal> vagrant package --output course.box \
--vagrantfile Vagrantfile
The settings in Vagrantfile are now packed with the box. In particular,
if X11 graphics has been enabled in Vagrantfile as described above,
you have
a fully functioning Ubuntu machine in course.box that will work
seamlessly with
X11 graphics on the host. Users can just do
Terminal> vagrant box add course course.box
Terminal> vagrant init course
Terminal> vagrant up
Terminal> vagrant ssh
A real machine (containing what is listed earlier, plus the FEniCS software) can be downloaded from Google Drive at http://goo.gl/ta977B (note the file size: 3.8Gb!).