The SeaDAS Virtual Appliance allows Microsoft Windows users to run SeaDAS
on their systems within a virtual Linux machine. The appliance runs on
Windows XP and Vista systems and includes a fully functional version of
SeaDAS within a streamlined Linux environment. Installation is extremely
simple and requires no knowledge of Linux. One might expect SeaDAS to run
much slower in a virtual environment, but we have been pleased to find
impressive performance results
indicating SeaDAS VA runs nearly as fast as a standard installation.
For those who don't want to have to fuss with installing
and administering Linux, this is an easy solution. This
virtual
appliance was created using VMware and simply requires you to install the free
VMware
Player, download SeaDAS VA, and you're ready to go! SeaDAS VA comes preinstalled
on the JeOS Ubuntu 8.04 Linux system, an efficient variant of Ubuntu
configured specifically for virtual appliances. The KDE Desktop Environment is also
pre-installed.
Minimum recommended requirements:
1GB RAM
2GHz CPU
10GB of free hard disk space (you will need more if you plan to process data)
Windows XP SP3 or Vista SP1
NOTE: Currently, the virtual appliance will not work on FAT32 formatted
hard disks (due to the FAT32 file size limit). Instead, the NTFS filesystem
should be used. To determine your filesystem type select My Computer in
the Start menu and under Hard Disk Drives, right click on any
hard disk drive and select Properties.
4) For the SeaDAS color system to work properly, the host Windows system
display must be set to millions of colors within the Windows Control Panel Display
section (any setting higher than 16-bit color is ok). If the Windows display is set
to 16-bit color, SeaDAS will still work but some of the colors may act strangely.
5) After the seadasva54.exe download completes, double-click it to extract
the seadasva folder containing these 2 files:
seadasvm.vmx: a small, editable configuration text file
seadasvm.vmdk: an 8GB virtual disk containing Ubuntu JeOS Linux,
the KDE Desktop, SeaDAS 5.4, a MODIS L1A test file and benchmark script
6) At this point you may want to increase the RAM allocated to SeaDAS VA,
since the default setting is only 256MB. It will run with 256MB, but increasing
the amount of RAM will increase performance. RAM you assign to SeaDAS VA is not
available to the host OS, so make sure you leave at least 256MB for the host
Windows system (perhaps more if you are running Vista). To change the RAM
allocation:
open the seadasvm.vmx file with the Windows Notepad application
edit the memsize line (RAM MUST be a multiple of 4!)
save and close the file
7) Double-click the seadasvm.vmx file to open the virtual appliance and
start using SeaDAS! (If this doesn't work then start VMware Player manually and
use it to select the seadasvm.vmx file.) The VMware Player application will open,
Linux will boot, and you should eventually see a desktop with a SeaDAS session
and two terminal windows.
8) You may immediately want to consider changing the default 1280x1024 display
resolution of the Linux system to match your Windows display resolution. Clicking
the top right Maximize button on the VMware Player window will activate
fullscreen mode. If your Windows resolution is set to less than 1280x1024, scroll
bars will be present to navigate the Linux desktop, or if your Windows resolution
is set to more than 1280x1024 a black border will surround the smaller Linux
desktop. If you decide to change the Linux screen resolution, open your Windows
Control Panel's Display section, determine your Windows display resolution, and then
execute the following command in a Linux terminal window:
sudo setres(the sudo
password is 'seadas')
Testing the SeaDAS Virtual Appliance:
1) One of the first things to test is to verify that your virtual appliance
is able to communicate with the network. One way to verify this is to launch
Firefox and see if it can find a web site.
2) If the network is working you can immediately test SeaDAS processing by
executing the following commands:
cd ~/test ./seadas_benchmarks.bash
If everything is working correctly, the MODIS Level-1A file will be processed
creating Level-1B, Level-2, and Level-3 data files in the test directory. Run the
script a second time to get a faster benchmark, as the first time will require the
virtual disk to 'grow' and will slow things down. You can compare your times to our
benchmarks page, and if your computer
seems slow you may want to increase the RAM allocated to the appliance as outlined in
the Important Notes section below. If you get a chance, send us the
seadas_benchmarks.log file so we can compare system performance.
3) To test the SeaDAS display functionality load and display one or more of the
data files in the test directory. If SeaDAS isn't open it can be started in three
ways:
click on the SeaDAS launcher globe icon in the task bar
selecting SeaDAS in the start menu
type "seadas" in a terminal window
4) To test the shared folders feature, create within Windows a C:\seadas_shared
directory on your hard disk. Then in the VMware Player window use the VMware
Player->Shared Folders pull-down menu and select 'Always enabled', and make
sure the Host Path is defined correctly (you can customize this to be a different
folder or drive as well). To see if the shared directory is actually working, execute
the following command in a Linux terminal:
touch ~/shared/testfile ls -l ~/shared (if you see the testfile listed then the
shared directory is working)
Important Notes:
There are two options to terminate SeaDAS VA. The best option is usually to click
the top right 'X' button on the VMware Player window. Doing this will put SeaDAS
VA into 'sleep mode' and would be the equivalent of closing your laptop. This
method makes subsequent startups faster than booting the entire system. The
second method is to shutdown the Linux system by either selecting 'Logout' in the
start menu or executing 'shutdown -h now'.
If you are planning on running the l1brsgen program to create true color images,
you will need to download and install
seadas_dem.tar.gz
from our ftp site, which includes the digital_elevation_map.hdf file. Similarly, if
you are planning on running the geolocation program, and you want the results to be
as accurate as possible, you need to download and install
seadas_dem_modis.tar.gz.
Beware that the virtual hard disk will keep growing as you add data until either
your Windows hard disk is full, or the virtual disk reaches 500GB.
You can process your data directly in the shared windows directory, but the
performance will decrease by approximately a factor of 2 due to overhead.
The default shared windows directory has been set to be C:\seadas_shared but
this can be changed to a different folder and/or drive using the VMware
Player->Shared Folders pull-down menu or by editing the seadasvm.vmx text file
using the Windows Notepad application.
We are looking into the possibility of making available an empty virtual disk so
users can do their processing on a separately mounted data disk instead of growing
the virtual appliance's virtual disk.
When in fullscreen mode, clicking the left push-pin button on the VMware Player
drop down menu will hide this menu until the mouse is moved over the thin menu strip
at the very top of the screen.
The amount of RAM allocated to SeaDAS VA can be changed in two ways. It can be
adjusted by editing the seadasvm.vmx file as outlined in Installation Step 6, or it
can be adjusted using the VMware Player's VMware Player->Troubleshoot->Change
Memory Allocation pull-down menu. For either of these options to take effect
the virtual machine must be rebooted by issuing the command 'sudo reboot' with the
sudo password being 'seadas'.
Security Considerations:
This appliance is as secure as we could make it. The base operating system (JeOS
Ubuntu 8.04) and each application that we added to it were updated just prior to
release on 03 June 2009, with no known security vulnerabilities. We make no
guarantees that SeaDAS VA is completely secure. There may be security issues that
arise subsequent to this release, and you (the user) are responsible for keeping
any and all non-SeaDAS portions of the appliance updated for security. Use at your
own risk.
Since this appliance allows the user to potentially execute root commands (with
sudo), it is possible that a hostile user could gain Administrator access on the
host PC. It is your responsibility to ensure that your users do not use this
appliance for hostile purposes.
To see what packages are installed on this appliance, use the 'dpkg -l' command.
