Getting Started: As a User

Virtual Machines

To start a Virtual Micromagnetics environment, you will need the following software:

After restarting your machine, command the following in an empty directory:

vagrant init virtualmicromagnetics/full
vagrant up --provider virtualbox

These commands will download the Full Virtual Micromagnetics environment from the Internet to your computer, and load the environment automatically. When complete, you should be greeted with this window:

_images/user-window-1.png

This is output from a virtual machine running on your computer! Virtual machines produced in this way run Ubuntu GNU/Linux (https://www.ubuntu.com) with the XFCE window manager. From here, you can follow instructions in the welcome file on the desktop to run simulations with the installed packages. Never worry about software dependencies again!

_images/user-window-2.png

Next, see Virtual Micromagnetics Environments and Simulation Software for the environments that are available besides the Full Virtual Micromagnetics environment, and the software on these environments, or you can read on to learn about container virtualisation.

Containers

Containers are an alternative virtualization technology to virtual machines. To start Virtual Micromagnetics containers, you will need:

Your user will need to be in the docker group on the machine you are running on [1]. After restarting your machine, command the following in an empty directory:

docker run -ti virtualmicromagnetics/lite:1.1.0 /bin/bash -l

This command will download the Full Virtual Micromagnetics container image from the Internet to your computer, and start bash in your shell.

Now take a look at Virtual Micromagnetics Environments and Simulation Software for the environments that are available besides the Full Virtual Micromagnetics environment.

[1]Note that the docker group is root-equivalent, so you will likely need to own the machine to use Virtual Micromagnetics containers. To avoid this, consider using a different provider that does not require root privileges, but beware, as Docker is the only container provider supported at present.