Getting Started: As a PoweruserΒΆ

In Virtual Micromagnetics Environments and Simulation Software, we learned about the different Virtual Micromagnetics environments available to users, which bundle sets of configured software. Here we outline how you can create virtual environments yourself, which you can distribute to others. We recommend reading Virtual Machines and Related Software, if you have not already.

To create a new, custom virtual environment, you will need the following software in addition to the software list in Getting Started: As a User:

With this software:

  1. Grab a copy of Virtual Micromagnetics. You can do this via Git by cloning our repository with git clone -b release https://github.com/computationalmodelling/virtualmicromagnetics.git, or by grabbing a release version at https://github.com/computationalmodelling/virtualmicromagnetics/releases
  2. Install some sub-packages:
    • Ansible role “blockinfile”; command ansible-galaxy install yaegashi.blockinfile -proles/ from the Virtual Micromagnetics software directory
    • Vagrant plugin “vagrant-vbguest”; command vagrant plugin install vagrant-vbguest
  3. Make, with make from the Virtual Micromagnetics software directory, with an Internet connection.

After time of the order of hours, you should find a box file at ./artefacts/virtualmicromagnetics-full-*.box. If not, see Troubleshooting for more help. If so, congratulations on building your first Virtual Micromagnetics environment! This file represents your virtual environment, which you can share with other users. You can use this environment yourself by commanding the following in an empty directory:

vagrant init $PATH_TO_BOX_FILE
vagrant up --provider virtualbox

where $PATH_TO_BOX_FILE is the aforementioned artefact file. Now that you can create virtual environments, see Developer Notes (valid for version 1.1.0) to learn how to customise the software you place on them.