The laboratory course computer for your home ("columba to go")

For students who wish to use the data reduction software on their own computer (at home), we offer a preconfigured virtual machine running Ubuntu 12.10. To install own software, use apt-get.

The virtual machine has these programs installed:

• ds9
• midas
• gdl with the IDL Astronomy Library
• wine
• Fitswork
• Kate, vim
• wrplot, gnuplot
• nightfall
• ssh bookmarks for the physical laboratory course computers in Nautilus and Dolphin

Current version of the virtual box: November 30, 2013.

Bring a USB stick with sufficient size (current size of the box ~ 3 GB) and ask the instructors. Alternatively, download the machine from our web site with the seminar talks (authorized access only).

The virtual machine was created with:

• built with Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.3.4
• 32bit
• 1024 MB RAM (can and should be increased)
• 1 CPU (can and should be increased)
• PAE/NX needs to be activated
• Hardware-Virtualisation and 3D acceleration disabled (can and should be activated)
• 64 MB Graphics RAM (can and should be increased)
• Network-NAT (to use the internet connection of the host system)
• bidirectional clipboard (host and guest system have a common clipboard, this requires the “Guest” extension)

The program can be downloaded here.

See here.

For support of USB2 and scaling-free window sizing additionally install the VirtualBox Extension Pack from the same page. This should be installed before the virtual machine is imported. Then reboot the (virtual) computer.

• import Appliance
• click Select and find the location of the virtual machine, then import
• after making technical changes (e.g. increasing the amount of RAM) to the virtual machine, the VirtualBox Extension Pack might need to be installed again.

Download (and install) the software applicable for your system from here.

Disclaimer VMware Player: VMware Player is free for private use. VMware Player Plus is liscensed for commercial use. If you want to learn the handling of virtual machines or try them out at home, you may use the free version VMware Player!

To be added…

To be added…

Sometimes Ubuntu fails to boot and freezes at the Ubuntu-logo. The reason could be that gnome or the X-server is broken (if the X server is started with startx, there will be error messages like /etc/X11/xinit/xserverrc: 3: exec: …). Follow these steps to solve this issue (Note: you need to be online):

1. change to the Recovery Mode during the booting process (press the Shift or ESC button)
2. resume booting with resume
3. Ubuntu boots without the desktop (just a shell)
4. login with normal user, password
5. execute: sudo apt-get update (the sudo password is the normal praktikum password)
6. execute: sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Afterwards, start the desktop with startx. It is however recommend to reboot the machine with sudo reboot. The machine should then start with the desktop.

First check if the system is using the latest version.

sudo apt-get update                        # update the package sources
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade                  # update the packages

It's important to have the package “update-manager-core” installed. Then prepare the update for the system:

sudo update-manager --proposed

The update will start after clicking on “Update”. On the next window one has to click on “Update system”. The info window “The support for some programs has ceased” can be closed. A final confirmation window “Do you want to start the system update?” needs to be approved by clicking on “Start system update”. The update process then proceeds with the download of the packages, which afterwards will be installed. The whole process might take a few hours.