VirtualBox Appliance Installation Guide and User Manual
Contents
1. constraints etc and the execution shaping the output into a series of statements that work poetically or aesthetically for the enduser poet For some idea of what writers have done with the Gnoetry program you can visit Beard of Bees Press and look at the Gnoetry collaborations published there or browse through the many poems and projects documented on the Gnoetry Daily blog e Beard of Bees Press Gnoetry http www beardofbees com gnoetry html e Gnoetry Daily https gnoetrydaily wordpress com Oracle VM VirtualBox Oracle s VirtualBox virtualization software is used mostly by software developers to run and test programs or operating systems in a controlled envirtonment known as a virtual machine A virtual machine is basically a complete operating system with any additional software the user would like to use or test that can run in an isolated state on top of the operating system that is currently installed on the real computer VirtualBox also allows for the sharing of appliances between users The appliance we will be using contains a virtual machine with a fresh installation of Xubuntu Linux 14 04 with Gnoetry 0 2 already installed and ready to use You will be using VirtualBox to run the Xubuntu OS or operating system on top of your computer s main operating system either Windows or Mac OS X This will effectively split your system s resources RAM processor and video memory between your host OS and the2. Operating System Windows XP or later or Mac OS X 10 6 or later Both 32 bit and 64 bit systems are supported by VirtualBox as well as this 32 bit appliance 1 VIRTUALBOX APPLIANCE INSTALLATION GUIDE This instuction set will guide you through the process of installing the pre configured Gnoetry on Xubuntu 14 04 VirtualBox appliance onto your system It contians a fully configured virtual machine with an Xubuntu 14 04 operating system and Gnoetry 0 2 First you will download the required program extension pack and appliance files Next you will install them Finally you will optimize the appliance and virtual machine for your system 1 1 Downloads 1 Ina web browser navigate to https www virtualbox org wiki Downloads and download the latest version of the VirtualBox platform for your system s operating system Windows Host or Max OS X Host 2 Lower down on the same page you will find a link to download the VirtualBox Oracle VM VirtualBox Extension Pack Download this extension pack for the same version of the VirtualBox platform that you downloaded in step 1 3 Now browse to http ericgoddardscovel com gnoetry appliance and guide in your web browser and download the Gnoetry on Xubuntu 14 04 VirtualBox Appliance You may download the full OVA file 2 3 GB or a split ZIP archive of it 3 files 4 Ifyou downloaded the zip files parts 1 2 and 3 extract the full file for installation You will need the full un
3. acceleration Try out 3D acceleration first and if it fails try 2D If neither work you can still run the appliance without them If you encounter problems look up information on your computer s video card to see what is or is not available Once you are finished optimizing the virtual machine you can proceed to starting the appliance and running Gnoetry 0 2 Page 9 2 USING THE VIRTUALBOX APPLIANCE 2 1 Starting the Virtual Machine 1 Open Oracle VM VirtualBox 2 Select Gnoetry on Xubuntu 14 04 from the list on the left hand side 3 Click the Start icon from the toolbar at the top VirtualBox will now load your virtual machine and boot Xubuntu in a new window 4 This virtual machine is configured so that you will not need to log in to Xubuntu but if you choose to update any software or use the terminal to run programs requiring adminstrator or superuser priveleges use the following username and password username enduser password pass 5 Finally resize the virtual machine window to better fit your screen Go to View gt gt Auto resize Guest Display in the top menu Note Anytime you update the Linux Kernel you will need to reinstall VirtualBox Guest Additions and resize the display again 2 2 Transfering Files from Your Main OS to the Virtual Machine This seems like it should be easy but it in my experience it is often not The Guest Additions installed on the virtual machine allow many options fo
4. the Gnoetry 0 2 icon on the Xubuntu desktop to load the program 2 You will first be presented with the a form settings window Choose which form you would like the program to use for your poem You may Choose from the Haiku Tanka and Renga forms or you may set up how many stanzas lines and or syllables per line you would like for a Blank Verse or Syllabic form For the Syllabic form you also have the option or making all subsequent stanzas identical Click Ok when you are done to continue 3 In the next window choose which source texts you want to use for your poem You can choose as many as you like but know that the larger the set of source texts the longer it will take the program to prepare the database for your poem 4 Ifyou choose more than one text you will be presented with another window that allows you to weight the source texts Each source text selected in the previous window is shown with a slider If you want all texts to have equal representation in the poem leave all the percentages as they are If you would like more text to come from any source or sources adjust the sliders to the desired percentage of representation Click Ok to continue 5 Your initial poem should now appear in the main Gnoetry interface window 3 2 The Gnoetry Interface The main Gnoetry interface window has several features to note as described below 1 The main workspace of the interface is in the bottom left The initial text
5. tokenize all py again FOR ADDITIONAL HELP If you encounter any problems with VirtualBox Xubuntu or Gnoetry during setup or after please contact Eric Goddard Scovel for assistance His email address is escovel gmail com Any feedback on the Gnoetry with Xubuntu 14 04 VirtualBox appliance or this manual will be greatly appreciated
6. GNOETRY 0 2 VirtualBox Appliance Installation Guide and User Manual June 2015 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Software amp Terminology System requirements 1 VirtualBox Appliance Installation Guide 1 1 Downloads 1 2 Installation 1 3 System Optimization 2 Using the VirtualBox Appliance 2 1 Starting the Virtual Machine 2 2 Transfering Files from Your Main OS to the Virtual Machine 2 3 Closing the Virtual Machine 3 Gnoetry 0 2 User Manual 3 1 Starting Gnoetry and Setting Up a New Poem 3 2 The Gnoetry Interface 3 3 Sculpting Your Poem 3 4 Saving Your Poem 3 5 Adding New Source Texts to Gnoetry For Additional Help 10 10 10 12 13 3 13 14 15 15 17 PREFACE For several years I have helped others to install Gnoetry 0 2 interactive poetry generation software on their computers and it has rarely been a simple task For most users a lack of experience with Linux and command terminals is a major obstacle Also there is often the additional burden of installing and maintaining two operating systems on one machine After failing with a few eager poets to get the program working on their computers I have decided to take a different route This guide and the accompanying VirtualBox appliance have been put together as my attempt to simplify the whole process so that users with Windows or Mac systems can safely run Linux and Gnoetry with minimal set up and much less room for error Currently Gnoe
7. Xubuntu virtual machine while you are using the appliance in VirtualBox You will likely notice a considerable change in performance to your host OS while using the virtual machine because of this After you pause or close the appliance all system resources and system performance will return to your main OS For more information and help with using VirtualBox you may consult the following documentation e VirtualBox End User Documentation https www virtualbox org wiki End user documentation Xubuntu Xubuntu a lightweight variation of Ubuntu Linux using the XFCE windows manager was chosen for this project in order to improve the performance of the virtual machine on computers with lower RAM and processor capacity The appliance uses version 14 04 2 LTS which is the latest stable release You can find more information about Xubuntu and XFCE at their websites e Xubuntu http xubuntu org e Xubuntu 14 04 Documentation http docs xubuntu org 1404 e XFCE http www xfce org SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS So that the virtual machine with Xubuntu and Gnoetry will run well on your computer you should meet at least these minimum system requirements Processor 1 GHz dual core processor or faster Any Intel Core 13 15 or 17 or equivalent will be sufficient RAM 2 GB or more Hard Disk Space 10 GB should be available for installation The Xubuntu virtual machine s virtual drive is configure to expand to no more than 20 GB
8. and the Xubuntu virtual machine Finally the third part explains in detail how to open and use Gnoetry 0 2 as well as how to add more source texts to use in the program Eric Goddard Scovel SOFTWARE amp TERMINOLOGY Before we begin it may be helpful to go over the software and associated terminology that are required to use the Gnoetry on Xubuntu 14 04 VirtualBox appliance Gnoetry Gnoetry as its creators have described it is an on going experiment in human computer collaborative poetry composition Gnoetry synthesizes language randomly based on its analysis of existing texts Any machine readable text or texts in any language can serve as the basis of the Gnoetic process Gnoetry generates sentences that mimic the local statistical properties of the source texts This language is filtered subject to additional constraints syllable Raymond Roussel s machine lire counts rhyming etc to produce a poem The element of user interaction to the poem generation process is what makes Gnoetry special among poetry generation software The initial poem that Gnoetry outputs from its algorithmic processes serves only as a jumping off point from which the user continues to interact with the source text or texts by selectively regenerating words phrases or sentences piece by piece within the program s interface The art of using Gnoetry is in both the setup selecting the right set of source texts setting formal
9. ating again 3 Next click on the Deselect button the broom icon to clear the selected region It will not clear any text away it only deselects the boxes that you highlighted with your mouse 4 Highlight another portion of the poem click Regenerate until satisfied and move on Repeat steps 1 through 3 until you are finished 5 You may also use the Undo and Redo buttons to correct mistakes 3 4 Saving Your Poem At any point during the scupting of your poem you can save it to a plain text file Simply choose File gt gt Save or File gt gt Save As from Gnoetry s top menu By default it will use the first line of the poem as the filename If you choose File gt gt Save initially it will save the file to the gnoetry interface folder in Xubuntu s home directory in this case the home directory is named enduser If you would like to save to a different directory or give it a different name use the File gt gt Save As option Once you have saved it with the name you want and to the location you would like you can click File gt gt Save to overwrite the file 3 5 Adding New Source Texts to Gnoetry One of the best ways to take full creative advantage of the Gnoetry program is to add new sources texts of your own selection editing or writing to the program This section will explain how to prepare the text files properly place them in the correct program folder and tokenize them so the program ca
10. compressed file Gnoetry on Xubuntu 14 04 ova file to proceed 1 2 Installation 5 Install the VirtualBox platform that you downloaded in Step 1 6 Next install the Extension Pack you downloaded in Step 2 The VirtualBox Manager the main VirtualBox program will open automatically when you double click on the extension pack installation file you downloaded 7 Once the extension pack has installed successfully navigate to the top menu of the VirtualBox Manager and choose File gt gt Import Appliance 8 Locate the Gnoetry on Xubuntu 14 04 o0va appliance file click import and agree to the license terms to install 9 You can now run your appliance with the default system settings to see how well it performs on your system It may be slow in loading Xubuntu or have poor performance after loading though The next steps will help you to optimize the appliance for you system to increase performance 1 3 System Optimization Before we begin you should be aware that the settings you choose in the following steps will vary depending on the resources of your system i e memory RAM video card number of processor cores and processor speed You will edit these settings on slide bars which indicate where the safe range is green and where you may be overtaxing your system s resources red It is always advised to stay within the green range To get the best performance put the settings high within the safe range 10 In the
11. menu on the left side of the VirtualBox Manager is a list of installed virtual machines Right click on the Gnoetry on Xubuntu 14 04 virtual machine then choose Settings from the menu 11 In the Settings menu choose System from the options on the left 12 In the first tab of System options the Motherboard tab you can set the amount of base memory or RAM which the virtual machine will have access to 1024 MB or gigabyte should be sufficient It is recommended that you use 2048 MB or 2GB or more if available It is alright to use up to 50 of your total system memory 13 Next go to the Processor tab Here you can choose the number of processor cores you would like your virtual machine to use Choose whatever you like which is in your safe range One or two cores are plenty 14 ee 16 Now go to the Acceleration tab Make sure that the two boxes are checked for Hardware Acceleration 1 Enable VT x AMD V and 2 Enable Page Nesting Next go to the Display settings in the left sidebar menu located just beneath System In the Video tab set the Video Memory slider all the way to the right so that it has access to all available video RAM You also have the option in the Video tab to enable either 3D accelleration or 2D acceleration not both These options will improve the performance of the virtual machine the most out of all of the optimization choices but you will need a video card that supports this type of
12. n use them 1 Find or create a plain text file of your source Make sure the file is saved as plain text txt preferably in UTF 8 or Western US ASCII encoding I suggest finding public domain books or collecting excerpts from websites into files according to a general theme or lexicon You may use the Firefox browser inside the Xubuntu virtual machine for this 2 From within the Xubuntu virtual machine it is easiest to create a text file for Gnoetry using the Mousepad text editor program which can be accessed from an icon on the desktop In Windows use the Notepad program In Mac OS X you can use TextEdit These programs are plain text editors that will not add any metadata to the text files 3 Add and or edit the text you would like in the text editor until you are satisfied It is a good practice to remove any copyright info table of contents and any other content that you do not want used in Gnoetry to create your poems At the top of your source file add this header to make it readable by Gnoetry BEGIN HEADER Title Author END_HEADER Add the title and author designation for your source text after the colons and make sure there are no spaces between the four lines This information will show up in the Gnoetry source selection window For Xubuntu Mousepad users only Before saving your file go to Document in the top menu and make sure that Write Unicode BOM is not checked When ready go to File gt gt Sa
13. nsfer them to the desktop your home folder or another folder inside the virtual machine You may also move files to the drive from Xubuntu After you have closed the virtual machine or unmounted the drive you will be able to access the new files in your host OS 2 3 Closing the Virtual Machine There are several ways to close the virtual machine The two methods described below will allow you to either shut down the machine completely or place it in a saved state much like a laptop set to hibernation e To shut down the virtual machine completely go to Machine gt gt Close in the top options menu When promted choose Send the shutdown signal then Shut Down It will go through the standard shut down procedure and close When you start the virtual machine again it will boot up with all files and other changes still intact e To save the current state of the virtual machine go to Machine gt gt Close in the top options menu When promted choose Save the machine state This will not shut down the virtual machine but will instead put it into a hibernation state where all opened files and programs will remain as they are when you saved teh machine state and exited When you start the virtual machine again everything will be exactly as you left it 3 GNOETRY 0 2 USER MANUAL 3 1 Starting Gnoetry and Setting Up a New Poem 1 Once you have started the Gnoetry on Xubuntu 14 04 virtual machine simply click on
14. o not work for you then you may need to set up the USB option 1 Only USB 1 0 and 2 0 drives or devices will work with the virtual machine so check for this before you begin 2 To set up the virtual machine to use a USB 2 0 flash drive for example you will first need to close down you virtual machine see next page for detailed instructions 3 Insert the USB drive you wish to use and let it mount to your Host OS as it normally does or manually mount it if you need to according to your system setup 4 From the VirtualBox Manager right click on the Gnoetry on Xubuntu 14 04 virtual machine in the left hand menu and choose Settings 5 From the left hand menu choose USB then make sure both Enable USB Controller and Enable USB 2 0 EHCI Controller are checked 6 Next add a new filter using the second icon from the top on the right hand side of the Settings window it has a small green sign on it Select the name of your USB drive from the options presented Click Ok to exit Settings Note You will need to add a filter for each drive or device you intend to use 7 Finally to access your USB device start the virtual machine Once Xubuntu has loaded to the desktop go to Devices gt gt USB Devices and choose the name of your USB device to mount it to your desktop It will unmount from your host OS and mount in Xubuntu You can now navigate the files on your USB drive from the file browser and tra
15. output can be found here in the form you chose earlier with each word and punctuation mark placed in a white box over a green background 2 To the right of this is a plain text preview of the poem over a white background This is also useful for copying and pasting select output to a text editor outside of Gnoetry if you choose to work in this way 3 Above this is the main toolbar with Undo Redo Deselect and Regenerate buttons Their functions are explained in detail in the next section 4 Finally at the top is a menu bar with some simple options The File menu allows you to create a new window copy your current window to a new one save your poem or print it The Edit menu has the same options as the top toolbar see above with an additional option to modify the text weights 3 3 Sculpting Your Poem Now you are ready to begin sculpting your own poem with the Gnoetry interface 1 To begin review the initial program output Highlight a section one or more boxes and click the Regenerate button above for the Gnoetry program to pick a new solution from the database of source texts it has created It will only regenerate the yellow selected boxes Keep clicking Regenerate until you arrive at something you like 2 Ifyou encounter a word or phrase which does not change when you hit regenerate then there is no other possible solution in the database to replace that word Try highlighting one or more words around it and regener
16. r trasfer of data and files betwen the host OS Windows or Mac OS X and your guest virtual machine but in my experience these do not always function as advertised VirtualBox has the options of using a Shared Clipboard Drag n Drop USB devices and setting up a Shared Folder The easiest of these are the Drag n Drop and Shared Clipboard Setting up a USB device filter is a bit more complicated Configuring a Shared Folder is a bit more troublesome so it will not be covered in this guide See the VirtualBox End User Documentation or search Google for assistance with this If all else fails for transferring data there is always the Internet Use webmail or a cloud service from inside the virtual machine within Xubuntu to share or transfer files between your host and guest operating systems Using the Shared Clipboard and Drag n Drop Options 1 You should first attempt to use the Shared Clipboard and Drag n Drop features Make sure these are both set to Bidirectional in the Devices menu at the top of the virtual machine window 2 Next click the Maximize Down button same as the Maximize button in the top right corner of the virtual machine window then resize the VirtualBox window so you can see both desktops 3 Drag a file over to test it out or copy one from the host OS click in the guest virtual machine desktop and paste it from the shared clipboard Using the USB Option If either of these options d
17. try 0 2 only runs in a Debian Linux environment like Ubuntu and Xubuntu The Virtualbox appliance allows users in Mac OS X Windows or other variants of Linux to quickly run a virtual machine of Xubuntu with a pre built Gnoetry program already installed and ready to use from the desktop A very flexible alternative to the desktop Gnoetry program is eddeaddad s jGnoetry web app and many users may be more interested in the convenience of this option jGnoetry functions very similarly to Gnoetry and even allows you to create unique syllabic forms Both programs have their strengths but I find I still cannot go without Gnoetry 0 2 Many thanks to Jon Trowbridge and Eric Elshtain for their years of work developing sharing and experimenting with this amazing composition tool I am grateful as well to Michel Alexandre Salim for the bug fixes and Makefile he provided to more easily build and use the program If you are interested you can download the source files and michel sim s modifications at his Gnoetry GitHub repository see the bugfix branch This user manual will help you quickly set up and use Gnoetry 0 2 on your computer regardless of what operating system you use The first part of this document will instruct you on what programs and files you will need to download to begin then it will guide you through the installation of the Gnoetry on Xubuntu 14 04 Virtualbox appliance The second part covers basic user information about VirtualBox
18. ve As Click on enduser in the left menu to select your home directory Next navigate to the gnoetry folder then to the texts txt folder Make sure to save the file as plain text by adding txt to the end of the filename It does not matter what else you put for the filename Next open up the Terminal Emulator from the desktop Enter the first command below to change directory to the gnoetry tools folder Next enter the second command to run the tokenize all py script Note that it begins with a period and a slash dot slash which instructs the terminal to run the program enduser enduser VirtualBox ed gnoetry tools enduser enduser VirtualBox tokenize all py You may do this as often as you like It simply cleans up and adds new or modified text files in the texts txt folder to Gnoetry s database of source texts Don t worry about the dropped sentences that the script reports These are often parts of the file that do not contain any phrase or sentence elements It usually reports a loss of about 5 20 of the words in the file The percentage will be higher for short files and files with a lot of numbered lists or with URLs headers or footers that were not cleaned out of the text file That s it When you next open Gnoetry your new texts will be on the list of available source texts If they did not appear check the header for any typos make sure the file is saved as plain text and run
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