ViPER

This project creates ViPER, the Virtual Preservation Environment for Research. The environment is a virtual machine set up with a set of digital preservation tools installed and ready to use from the desktop.

Supporting documentation is presented in these sections, or you can use the documentation website:

1. Setup Guide: How to download and configure ViPER.
2. User Guide: Some help getting acquainted with VirtualBox and the environment.
3. Tool Reference: A list of the bundled tools and some help references.
4. Maintainer's Guide: A look at how ViPER is produced and how it can be updated or extended.
5. Quick Start: A brief look at how to get going with this project yourself.
6. References: A list of references used in the documentation.

Logging Issues

Should you have problems with ViPER then please raise a GitHub issue on the project GitHub issue tracker Openpreserve ddhn-forge. You're also free to suggest enhancements by raising an issue. Please note that this should be limited to ViPER functionality only, tool enhancements should be directed to the relevant sites. If you do not have a GitHub user account you can also post issues via the OPF contact us page

Quick Start

The quickest way to try out ViPER is to download the machine image.

Prerequisites

You'll need Virtual Box on your machine to act as a virtualisation platform. If you're installing VirtualBox:

• Check that you have hardware virtualisation enabled in your BIOS.
• Please install the Extension Pack.

Downloading the virtual Machine

Rather than build a vagrant machine you can download a prebuilt OVF file which can be downloaded ViPER. The download takes some time as it's about 4GB. When it's finished you should have a file called viper.ova.

These instructions tell you how to import the OVA file into VirtualBox so you can start it.

Logging onto the machine

Account login should be automatic. Regardless the account name is viper with a blank password.

Tweaking the VirtualBox Machine

Out of the box the machine should come configured with:

• 2 virtual CPUS
• 4GB of RAM
• 128MB of video RAM to allow desktop scaling

More CPU and RAM will almost certainly improve performance. If you're setting up a vagrant box from scratch you can use the Maintenance Initialisation instructions to change the parameters. If you've imported the OVA you can use the VirtualBox GUI to make the changes as described here.

ViPER Tools and Resources

The list of tools and reference resources is maintained here in a separate Markdown file.