Installation

Download and install the free VMWare Server from:

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

Download the vmbiskit snapshot from http://serrano.crg.es/vm/vmbiskit_0.4_free7.10.tar.bz2

Unpack the snapshot

• On Unix:

  tar jvfx vmbiskit_ubuntuserver.tar.bz2
  

• On Windows: 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org/) allows to unpack bz2 under Windows.

  (Thanks to Anders Norgaard for this hint!)

Open the virtual machine in VMWare

• File / Open / Browse -> vmbiskit_ubuntuserver/
• Start (Note: Reply 'Keep' when asked about changing the hardware ID)
• login with user name biskit and password biskit

Connect to the virtual machine

The vmbiskit snapshot is a text-only installation but it can 'forward' graphical x11 windows to your host computer. The system is configured to fetch a dynamic IP address from DHCP (modify these settings in /etc/network/interfaces). To access it from outside, you need to know which IP address was assigned to it.

• on vmbiskit: read the IP address with ifconfig:

  vmbiskit|~> ifconfig
  eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:29:4F:52:46
            inet addr:192.168.116.131  Bcast:192.168.116.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
            inet6 addr: fe80::20c:29ff:fe4f:5246/64 Scope:Link
  ...
  

• Note the address given after 'inet addr:'

• Now connect to the vmbiskit machine from your host:

  ssh biskit@192.168.116.131
  

  Replace '192.168.116.131' with the address noted above.

  And check that you can open graphical windows:

  vmbiskit~> pymol
  

  If pymol doesn't open, try to re-connect with 'ssh -X biskit@192.168.116.131'

Bring everything up-to-date

• upgrade to the latest biskit version:

  cd ~/py/biskit
  svn update
  

See also: Update VMBiskit