On 21 Mar 2014, at 20:21, Gábor Csárdi <csardi.ga...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 11:12 AM, Rainer M Krug <rai...@krugs.de> wrote: > >> Gábor Csárdi <csardi.ga...@gmail.com> writes: >> >>> You might want to look at packer as well, which can build virtual >> machines >>> from an ISO, without any user intaraction. I successfully used it to >> build >>> VMs with Linux, OSX and Windows. It can also create vagrant boxes. You >> can >>> specify provisioners, e.g. to install R, or a set of R packages, etc. It >> is >>> under heavy development, by the same team as vagrant. >> >> I think I am getting lost in these - I looked ad Docker, and it looks >> promising, but I actually didn't even manage to sh into the running >> container. Is there somewhere an howto on how one can use these in R, to >> the purpose discussed in this thread? If not, I really think this would >> be needed. It is extremely difficult for me to translate what I want to >> do into the deployment / management / development scenarios discussed in >> the blogs I have found. >> > > I haven't tried Docker, so I cannot say anything about that. The purpose of > vagrant and packer is slightly different, but there seems to be some > overlap. > > Packer helps you building a virtual machine from an ISO, automatically, > without any human interaction. That's pretty much it. The result can be a > VirtualBox, VMWare, etc. virtual machine, or even a vagrant box. I used it > to build Ubuntu, OSX and Windows boxes, it works great if you have a > working configuration. If you need to tweak a config to install additional > software, etc. then it requires some experimenting and patience, because > debugging is not that great. > > Vagrant manages disposable virtual machines. I.e. it takes a vagrant box, > which is essentially a VM and some extra configuration info, provisions it, > which usually means installing software or setting up a development > environment, and then manages it, so that you can ssh to it, or do whatever > you want with it. > > There are a number of boxes available, so if you want a minimal VM with > Ubuntu32, it takes one command to create it from a public box, another one > starting it, and a third one to ssh to it. It is literally a couple of > minutes, downloading the box takes longest. If you have the box, then it is > even quicker. > > You can use packer and vagrant together. Packer creates the vagrant box, > sets up a very minimal environment. Then you can use vagrant with this box. > > In my opinion it is somewhat cumbersome to use this for everyday work, > although good virtualization software definitely helps. > > Gabor > Additional info: you access R into the VM from within the host by ssh. You can enable x11 forwarding there and you also got GUI stuff. It works like a charm, but there are still some problems on my side when I try to disconnect and reconnect to the same R process. I can solve this with, say, screen. However, if any X11 window is displayed while I disconnect, R crashes immediately on reconnection. Best, PhG > [[alternative HTML version deleted]] > > ______________________________________________ > R-devel@r-project.org mailing list > https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel ______________________________________________ R-devel@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
