Quick start

Warning

We do no longer support 32-bit environments!

Requirements

Install VirtualBox and download the latest VM image.

Import the VM in VirtualBox

  • Start VirtualBox.
  • From the File menu, choose Import Appliance.
  • Choose the *.ova file which you downloaded above
  • Check Appliance Settings: make sure that “Guest OS Type” “Debian (64bit)”.
  • optional: under Appliance Settings, you can increase RAM to 4096 MB (only recommended if your OS has more than 6 GB RAM).
  • Click Import, wait for the VM to import. The VM should appear on the left sidebar.

Launch the VM

  • In VirtualBox, select the appliance and click the Start button.
  • Wait for VM to boot, then login as user vagrant with password vagrant.
  • In some cases, it may be necessary to reboot the VM if nothing appears after a minute or so (use Reset).

Start jupyter

Once you have logged into the VM, you can access the course materials by starting a jupyter notebook server.

However, the VM is currently in a phase of transition: it contains two Python environments which are required by different packages.

If you want to run BALTRAD or Radx notebooks, execute

$ ./start_notebook.sh

which will run jupyter from within the system Python (2.7) environment.

If you want to run Py-ART, wradlib, or PyTMatrix notebooks, execute

$ ./start_notebook.sh openradar

which will run jupyter from within the conda Python 3.6 environment openradar.

Warning

As a result of using seperate Python environments, the interoperability demos that run BALTRAD, Py-ART and wradlib in one environment are currently not operational.

Run jupyter notebooks

After you have started jupyter, open a browser window on your host machine and navigate to http://127.0.0.1:8888/tree. For recent versions of jupyter (i.e. when you used $ ./start_notebook.sh openradar), you need to copy and paste the secure token into the browser window. The secure token is shown in the VM terminal window.

If you are unable to copy and paste the secure token from the VM terminal into the browser, you can set a password instead. Shut down the jupyter server in the VM terminal (Ctrl+c), set a password via, and restart the server:

$ source $CONDA_DIR/bin/activate openradar
(openradar) $ jupyter notebook password
Enter password:
Verify password:
...
$ ./start_notebook.sh openradar

In order to get started, you can choose from a selection of course notebooks. See here for more details on available courses.

Having any problems?

There are a some known issues. Please see here how to address them.

If you are experiencing any other problems, please raise an issue.