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:
- Setup Guide: How to download and configure ViPER.
- User Guide: Some help getting acquainted with VirtualBox and the environment.
- Tool Reference: A list of the bundled tools and some help references.
- Maintainer's Guide: A look at how ViPER is produced and how it can be updated or extended.
- Quick Start: A brief look at how to get going with this project yourself.
- References: A list of references used in the documentation.
Should you have problems with ViPER then please raise a GitHub issue on the project GitHub issue tracker. 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
The quickest way to try out ViPER is to download the machine image.
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.
Download the latest version of ViPER at <https://ddhn.openpreservation.org/viper-v{{ site.data.vars.version }}.ova>. ViPER is distributed as a prebuilt OVF file. The download takes some time as the file is about 5GB.
These instructions tell you how to import the OVA file into VirtualBox so you can start it.
Account login should be automatic. Regardless the account name is viper with a blank password.
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.