brownvm

brownvm enables you to work on your files on brown's servers in totally new ways.

• the /home/USERNAME and /course directories on brown's servers appear to be on your computer. that is, you get ./home/USERNAME and ./course on your local machine and you can treat them as you would any local file.
• you also have a linux server with the /course and home directories mounted at the same place as they are on brown's servers. essentially you have a machine with the same operating system as brown's servers, but now you have the liberty to install whatever you want.

most things in this document assume you're running os x, but there is also information on linux.

Why?

total freedom.

1. work locally: you now have all the same tools and programs you're comfortable with (running at native speed).
2. target linux: if you want to compile your code, you can use the same great linux tools on department machines.

Usage

after installing, instantly mount your files:

and work locally, see changes reflected on server:

Interface

brownvm's interface is done entirely through make. here are the targets:

• start - mounts the brown files and starts the vm (only mounts if you're on linux)
• stop - unmounts the brown files and stops the vm (only unmounts if you're on linux)
• install - installs everything (you need brew if on os x)
• install_fs - installs everything required to run sshfs (you need brew if on os x)
• init - initializes the .uname file that tracks your username
• update - pulls down the latest version of this repo
• mount - mounts the brown files
• umount - unmounts the brown files
• start_vm - starts vm (not available on linux)
• stop_vm - stops vm (not available on linux)
• ssh - ssh into the vm (not available on linux)
• clean - unmounts the brown files, and removes extra directories
• clean_extra - deletes .uname

the more likely use-case is that you just want the sshfs stuff. when this is the case, only worry about mount and unmount.

Workflow Example

after make install, you run make mount: your home directory is now mounted in this one at ./home/USERNAME. now, you work on your homeowrk using your favorite text editor while dragging and dropping stuff around. once you've finished, you want to compile your code, so you run make start_vm ssh. you install your favorite clang tools with sudo apt-get install -y llvm clang libblocksruntime-dev; then you compile your code and run it, but that was just for fun. now you have to do some web apps hw, but the department's version of nodejs doesn't really work. instead of running the code on the vm, however, you just run it locally since your computer already has the latest and greatest version. finally, you do an ssh brown and run the handin command for your assignment.

Installation

Requirements

you must be able to ssh into brown by doing ssh brown. in order to do so, add

Host brown
     Hostname ssh.cs.brown.edu
     User USERNAME

line to your ~/.ssh/config file (on your local machine).

OS X

you need to have brew installed.

Installing

first thing you have to do is:

git clone https://github.com/r-medina/brownvm.git && cd brownvm

to get this code and move into that directory. now you can run

make install

OS X

you now have all the dependancies for running sshfs and vagrant. if, however, you wanted a more light-weight installation without the vm, just do

make install_fs

and then be sure to only use the mount and umount targets to make (instead of start and stop).

Linux

installing will only get sshfs (since you don't need a linux vm). the start and stop make targets only mount and dismount the brown filesystems.

Dependancies

• sshfs

OS X

• osxfuse
• virtualbox
• vagrant

FAQ