-- MarkoPetek - 02 Feb 2009

This page describes the installation and setup process for CernVM and CMS Software running inside a virtual environment.

Prerequisites

• A computer with at least 1Gb of RAM, the more the best. Running Windows, Linux or Mac operational systems
• A Software of Virtualization
• A connection to the internet if you want to use the update features and download new softwares.

Installation and Configuration Guide

Those instructions are based on a x86 architecture. Future releases will also deal with x86-64 bits and other options.

1-Download the software

CernVM software should be downloaded from the rbuilder depository. The current CernVM release (1.01) is available at http://rbuilder.cern.ch/project/cernvm/release?id=14

Choose the “x86 VMware (R) Virtual Appliance”. Click on the Download icon, or click here.

If you don’t have the VMware Player, please do it now, clicking on the Download VMware Player Icon

Save both downloads to your machine and proceed to step 2.

2-Install the VMWare Player (in Windows)

Once it is finished, click on Finish to exit the setup process.

3-Install CernVM

First thing is to untar the Virtual Machine downloaded file. If you don’t have a software able to untar files in Windows you may download a test version of WinRar here.

Now open the VMWare Player and Click on the Open Icon. Browse to the folder where you did the untar of the downloaded CernVM file and click on the file with termination .vmx that correspond to the Virtual Machine downloaded.

After a boot process,during which some of the tasks may take a while to be completed a black screen like the one below will be presented:

You need to locate the IP Address attributed to your Virtual Machine. See the highlighted square on the above image. On that installation the IP Address is: 192.168.236.129

The CernVM is installed and running. Now it is time to configure it.

4-Configuring CernVM

The configuration is done through a web interface. To start, please launch your preferred web browser. Next fill the address on the browser as

http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:8003

where xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is the IP Adress showed on the VMWare screen as noted on the previous step.

Please note that you must change 2 things on the address provided in the VMWare screen:

a-first change https by http on the beginning of the address; b-second, change the end of the address from 8004 by 8003

So, in the given example you should fill the address in the browser as http://192.168.236.129:8004

The following screen will appear

On the User Name field, use “admin”

On the Password field, use “password”

Click on Sign in

First thing, for security is to change the password that you used above to login.

Then you are going to configure a user account. Fill the “User Name”, “Password” and “Confirm Password” on the next screen and click Ok

On the next screen you will configure the Virtual Organization that you belong too and other parameters. Select CMS as the Virtual Organization and the

Yes – to Enable Virtual Organization Profile No – to Make cvmfs file system locally writeable Yes – to Enable Grid User Interface

And click on Ok

You will see a “Please Wait” box. This can be a long time consuming step, so go take a coffee if there is a machine near you 

After some minutes you should have a page like the following describing your system

Your Cern Virtual Machine is configured and ready to go.

5-Using the CernVM

To access the text interface go back to the VMWare login page

Fill login with the username that you created for you on the Local User Account Setup and password with the one created on the same step. To do it you need to first click inside the VMWare Client window.

You are now on a Linux environment. Your software is located on

/opt/cms

If you follow the picture below you will be able to find it.

Once you are inside the VMWare Client window, the only way to go back to Microsoft Windows is pressing CTRL+ALT keys together .

Enjoy it !!!