nbsp Virtual Appliance

The ``nbsp virtual appliance'' (nbspVA) is the name of a package for running nbsp in a Windows computer. This is different from the cygwin version of nbsp, which is no longer supported. In fact, nbsp running in this way is the exact same version that runs under linux or, more accurately, FreeBSD.

Technically, it is a VMware ``virtual machine'', using FreeBSD as the guest OS. However, rather than being a general purpose virtual machine, it is a specially configured installation of FreeBSD, together with all the packages required to run nbsp already installed and configured. The entire nbspVA package runs in a windows computer as another program, with exactly the same features of the nbsp package that runs in a linux or FreeBSD computer. Other applications such as grlevel3 and Digital Atmosphere, running on the same or a different computer, can connect to nbspVA in exactly the same way as explained in the DA and grlevel3 section elsewhere in this manual.

Requirements

Windows XP

1 GB of RAM

30 GB free disk space

Good processor

VMware Player (see below)

Short Instructions

• VMware Player must be installed. It can be downloaded freely from the VMware web site.
• The nbspVA package must be installed. It can be downloaded from the software section of this site and installed, It is distributed as a zip file. It must be uncompressed and it can be installed anywhere. But a convenient directory is the folder ''My Virtual Machines'' which appears under ``My Documents'' after the VMware Player is installed. In that way, the VMware Player can find it quickly without having to open the dialog window to look for the nbsp file.
• Execute the ``VMware Player'' application, and ``open'' the nbsp virtual machine. That will power on the virtual machine. When prompted whether to keep or create a new UUID, choose keep. After the initialization, the startup program will prompt for a username and password. The username is root and the password is nbsp. Simply login, and that will invoke a set of screens that will ask some questions to do the initial configuration. The configuration screens can be invoked at anytime by executing

  nbspVA-configure

• Then, execute

  shutdown -r now

  to reboot the virtual machine, or let the scripts do it. NOTE: It is very important to always shutdown the virtual machine OS before exiting the VMware Player application. Always execute

  shutdown -h now

  and wait until you see ``The operating system has halted'', before exiting the application and/or selecting to ``Power off'' the virtual machine in the application menu.
• When the machine reboots, nbsp will start automatically.
• Read the file README.nbspVA that accompanies the package for more specific information that can be useful.