Berkeley Phonetics Machine

The Berkeley Phonetics Machine (BPM) is a virtual machine with software for doing phonetics already installed.

The current BPM derives from the Berkeley Common Environment (BCE) machine image, which is used in a variety of classes and workshops on the UC Berkeley campus.

Requirements

In order to use BPM your computer must support virtualization and

1. be able to run VirtualBox. Currently VirtualBox supports the running of VMs on host machines with 32-bit and 64-bit Intel-compatible processors, running Windows, OS X, Linux, and Solaris.
2. have sufficient disk space (approximately 8GB minimum)
3. have sufficient RAM. We recommend you reserve a minimum of 1GB for the virtual machine.

Getting started

1. Download and install Virtualbox.
2. Download the 2015-spring public virtual machine image.
3. Open Virtualbox.
4. Click File, Import appliance...
5. Find the .ova file you downloaded (probably in your Downloads folder), and click Continue.
6. In the Appliance Settings dialog box you can change the amount of RAM dedicated to the virtual machine; the default is 2048MB (2GB). If your computer does not have much RAM you might reduce this number *before* you start up the virtual machine. For example, if your computer has only 2GB of RAM, you cannot allocate 2GB to your virtual machine and have enough left for the host computer to continue to run. The amount of RAM you need to leave available to the host computer depends on how much your operating system and open applications need. 1GB for the host computer is probably the minimum amount.
7. Click Import.

Previous versions:

2014 image

Shared folders

Shared folders are folders that reside on the host machine and are accessible to the virtual machine. These are optional but highly recommended. First, it is convenient to be able to access files from both the host and the guest machines. Second, if the guest machine becomes damaged and fails to boot, the files in the shared folder will still be accessible on the host machine. If necessary, you can simply import the BPM again and start working with the data in the shared folder.

These are the steps to create a shared folder:

1. Use your file manager to create a folder on your host computer, e.g. bpmshare on your Desktop, or wherever you like.
2. Return to Virtualbox, select your virtual machine, and click Settings, Shared Folders.
3. Click the + icon to add a shared folder.
4. In 'Folder path', browse to the folder you created and choose it.
5. Also click 'Auto mount' so that this folder will automatically be available in the virtual machine when you start it.
6. Click 'OK' to leave Settings.

When you boot the machine the shared folder will be mounted under /media with an sf_ prefix, for example, /media/sf_bpmshare.

Booting the machine

Now you're ready to boot the BPM. Make sure your virtual machine is selected in VirtualBox and click Start. The machine will boot and automatically log in as user 'oski'.

The 'BPM documentation' link on the desktop will open this wiki page.

Shutting the machine down

You can choose to shut the machine down, or you can simply suspend it and save the current state. With the first option, the machine will boot fresh the next time you start it. With the second all of the applications currently open at the time you suspended the machine will return to their previous states.

To shut the machine down, click on the Menu, then the Shutdown icon.

To suspend the machine, take the machine out of fullscreen mode, then click the close button on the host window that encloses the machine. Choose 'Save the machine state' from the dialog box.

Included software

The BPM includes a variety of software packages for doing phonetic research:

1. OpenSesame psychology software
2. Praat phonetic analysis
3. wavesurfer
4. klsyn speech synthesis
5. sox
6. ffmpeg
7. convertlabel - utility for converting between label file types
8. audiolabel - Python library for reading label files, such as Praat textgrids
9. ifcformant - Inverse Filter Control formant tracker
10. make_text_grids
11. esps utilities

Installing and updating additional packages

Not every software package that might be of interest to linguists is already installed on the BPM. Additional packages can be installed (and in some cases, existing software can be upated) with the bpm-update utility. To do an install, do:

sudo bpm-update <target>

<target> identifies the package to be installed. To see a list of available <target>s, do:

 bpm-update --help

Versions

The current version of BPM is shown in the file version.txt on the machine desktop.

Sharing with colleagues

You can customize your machine and share it with colleagues. Simply shut down the machine, then in VirtualBox choose File, Export appliance.... Choose the machine you wish to export, then click Continue. Provide a filename in the Storage Settings dialog (we recommend that you not overwrite the existing BPM file). Customize the Name and Description fields of the Appliance Settings dialog if you wish, then click Export. The .ova you named will be created, and you can send it to another user.

The .ova file is quite large, probably 3GB or more, and a good way to share it is to use box.net. Berkeley affiliates have access to 50GB of storage on box.net through their Bconnected accounts. Go to [http:/bconnected.berkeley.edu Bconnected] and follow the link to Box.

Privacy

We recommend that you do not use the BPM to access accounts or web sites that you do not wish to share with the world. When you export an appliance to share with others, all of the data stored in the machine is shared. You might not want to share your web history, ssh keys, or other personal information. Comments on privacy, secrets.