Installation of FLUPIX

FLUPIX allows one to run FLUKA/Flair from within a VirtualBoxVM virtual machine running on Mac OS X or Windows hosts (among other operating systems). The principal documentation for installation of FLUPIX can be found at this link, but as usual this documentation is a bit out of date. The basic steps for installation are as follows:

Step 1: Installation of the VirtualBox virtual machine software

Download and install from VirtualBox the appropriate binary for your platform.

Step 2: Download the FLUPIX LiveCD .iso file

Despite what the documentation says, you only need the .iso file, which you can find at this link. You will need your FLUKA userid and password to download this file.

Step 3: Configure the FLUPIX virtual machine

Start up VirtualBox, and create a new virtual machine using the following settings in the wizard:

Name:	FLUPIX
OS Type:	Linux 2.6
Base Memory:	>1024 MB (not less than 1024 MB)
Boot Hard Disk:	<no hard disk>
	(Click "continue" on the warning message)

I did not find it necessary (on Mac OS X Yosemite) to change any other setting in VirtualBox at this point.

Step 4: Start up the virtual machine for the first time

Click on START. The first time you start up the virtual machine, it will complain and say that there is no .iso file (or other installed operating system) to boot from. At this point, you can add the .iso file that you downloaded above. The FLUPIX virtual machine should then start up.

Step 5: Add a shared folder from the host system

You probably will want to add at least one folder from the host system which will be shared with the host system. This will be your main FLUKA working directory. To do this, from within VirtualBox, under Settings, click on Shared Folders, and then add the folder that you want to share from the host system. Make sure to click the "Auto-mount" and "Make permanent" options (but NOT the Read-Only option).

In order for Flair to run properly using this directory as a working directory, it needs to be possible to create symbolic links. This is disabled by default in the current version of VirtualBox (another non-documented feature!). To enable symlinks on Mac OS X, execute the following command at a terminal prompt on your Mac OS X system:

/Applications/VirtualBox.app/Contents/MacOS/VBoxManage setextradata FLUPIX VBoxInternal2/SharedFoldersEnableSymlinksCreate/flukawork 1

This assumes that your virtual machine is called FLUPIX and your shared directory is called flukawork.

You can now restart the FLUPIX virtual machine and you should see the shared flukawork directory on your Desktop.