I've been wanting to work for ATLAS, but I don't know how to configure Virtualbox on Linux Mint. I've never been the most computer literate on a PC, and now I have Linux(because my techie friends recommended it). Any help? Please?

You install it using Synaptics. Use one of the following package names:

virtualbox-4.3
virtualbox-4.2
virtualbox , virtualbox-dkms and virtualbox-qt

Or you can download it directly from Virtualbox.org. The packages for Ubuntu work on Mint.

Not all Virtualbox versions are compatible with BOINC projects. Make sure the one you are installing is compatible with ATLAS.

Once you have installed Virtualbox all you need to do is restart BOINC.

Thanks for your help. I don't know what Synaptics is, but one of my techie friends happened over, and after a bunch of technobabble, he tells me he needs to install Fedora.

Fedora is a whole different distribution of Linux. One that may have problems with BOINC (be warned up front).

Synaptic (wiki explanation) is the software package install mechanism in Linux. You use it to install and remove all software updates and upgrades available for your distribution of Linux. So that you don't have to search for these yourself.

You can use it from a terminal window.

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In addition to what Ageless said, Synaptic (without the 's' I had in previous post) is installed in Mint by default. You can find it in Menu -> Administration -> Synaptic.

Once you get the program running type 'virtualbox' in the search field and press enter. You install packages by clicking the box in 'S' column or right-clicking the package name and selecting 'Mark for installation' and when you are done selecting packages you click the 'Apply' button.

I don't know why your friend says he needs to install Fedora. Virtualbox works just fine in Mint.

He said that there's a software weakness that Ubuntu and Linux have not corrected in their last couple of releases, which Fedora will compensate for, and enable me to use Virtualbox, or words to that effect. I will admit to zoning out after a few minutes of technobabble.

Sounds like a marketing talk, as in 'this product is better than the product you now use, because of X'. There have been plenty of software weaknesses found lately in various things, such as the Heartbleed Bug which is a vulnerability in the OpenSSL libraries, the BASH vulnerability a.k.a. 'Shellshock', or Ghost which is caused by a buffer overflow in the LibC library.

But all those are easily fixed, by downloading and installing new versions of these library packages through Synaptic. The Linux package maintainers are usually on top when it comes to fixing these vulnerabilities. They'll release updates almost instantaneous, whereas you'll find Microsoft waiting until Patch Tuesday (even if that's three weeks from now).

Of the above examples, all are fixed in Linux Mint 17 and 17.1, as well as in Fedora 20 and 21. So it sounds to me like your techie friend is just trying to sell you the distro he likes most.

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I run Mint 17.1 (which is based on Ubuntu 14.04.1) and have Virtualbox installed. It works just fine. (Although I don't have enough RAM so I don't use it for BOINC.)

If Ubuntu were incompatible with ATLAS you'd think ATLAS folks would have put a big warning in their front page about that, considering that Ubuntu is rather popular Linux distribution.

The Virtualbox package that comes from Ubuntu is a bit older but that doesn't mean it hasn't had any updates. While the package hasn't been updated to include latest features it has had security and compatibility patches. As it happens, Mint people have decided to include the latest Virtualbox version in their repositories, under the package name virtualbox-4.3 .

It's the battle of the experts, and I just feel like the Jack O'Neill to everybody's Samantha Carter. I get that there's a lot of science involved, and a lot of smart people, but I just want my problem solved.

I don't mind helping you but you have to decide what should be done. It is your computer after all.

The way I see it there's three choices:

0. Forget about ATLAS.
1. Keep using Mint and install Virtualbox in it.
2. Switch to Fedora and install Virtualbox there.

I'm guessing 0 is out of question, with 2 I can't help because I don't want to write instructions to install Fedora because I've never installed it before and there's too darn many gotchas. With 1 I can help but you need to say that's what you want.

Which version of Mint you use anyway? If you don't know/remember it off hand you can find the version in Menu->Preferences->System Info or Welcome Screen in same place.

Linux Mint 17 Qiana

The reason why my techie friend wants to install Fedora is because virtualbox says it has an error with the kernel driver.

I did wonder why Fedora would be better than Mint. Thanks for following up on this.

Ok. In order to run VirtualBox needs some kernel modules and these modules must be compiled against your current kernel. Every time you update your kernel those modules must be recompiled. This can be done manually but unless you are completely nuts you'll want it done automatically. 'virtualbox-dkms' package does this. Installing it should be enough but you may need to reboot once after installing it so that the VirtualBox kernel modules are loaded.

Just in case you already have 'virtualbox-dkms' installed but VirtualBox still complains. Linux kernel developers change things every now and then in some way that's incompatible with VirtualBox modules. I checked Ubuntu's bug list for VirtualBox but didn't see any open bugs there that would have something to do with the kernel version you are (likely) running. And it seems Ubuntu maintainers patch the kernel modules relatively quickly when needed.

There's some posts on the net saying people have needed to purge VirtualBox and then reinstall it to fix the kernel modules. (purge=remove all the package files including configuration files; uninstall=remove program files and don't touch configuration files).

Or you could uninstall the Ubuntu packaged version you have now and install VirtualBox from packages Oracle has done (=virtualbox-4.3). You'd get a newer version that way and those may be a bit more up to date when it comes to kernel changes. (Ubuntu maintainers get their patches from Oracle packages.)


Another thing. In the first post to this thread you say you want to work for ATLAS. From ATLAS home page:

A reasonably powerful modern 64-bit computer with at least 4GB of memory is required to run ATLAS@Home. Enabling 64-bit virtualisation may require some changes in BIOS settings.

And from an earlier post of yours:

Mon 16 Feb 2015 11:20:19 PM MST | | Starting BOINC client version 7.2.42 for x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
Mon 16 Feb 2015 11:20:19 PM MST | | Processor: 2 GenuineIntel Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 3.00GHz [Family 15 Model 4 Stepping 3]
Mon 16 Feb 2015 11:20:19 PM MST | | Processor features: fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx lm constant_tsc pebs bts nopl pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est cid cx16 xtpr
Mon 16 Feb 2015 11:20:19 PM MST | | OS: Linux: 3.13.0-24-generic
Mon 16 Feb 2015 11:20:19 PM MST | | Memory: 3.05 GB physical, 0 bytes virtual

That says you have 64-bit system. But you only have 3GB of memory. Even if that 4GB is only a recommendation instead of a hard limit you are still a quarter short of the recommendation. Running ATLAS could make the computer unusable for anything else at the same time.

But bigger problem is the CPU in your computer. ATLAS has only 64-bit virtual machines. In order to run those VirtualBox requires that the CPU has hardware virtualization support. I'm not entirely sure but it looks like the CPU doesn't have that feature. That means you need to upgrade your computer to run ATLAS.

If you are interested in supporting any research CERN does the other CERN projects have lesser requirements and should run on your computer.