This page describes how to get the support software for the ERS tutorial onto your computer. We recommend tutorial attendees start with the VirtualBox appliance, to reduce variability for hands-on portions of the tutorial.

Here are the steps to get started with the VirtualBox appliance:

1. Install the VirtualBox installer, either from http://virtualbox.org or from the tutorial USB key. You may be prompted to (automatically) install drivers or be warned that Microsoft has not tested the software.

2. Obtain the LREC appliance OVA file, either from here or from the tutorial USB key.

3. Launch VirtualBox and choose "Import Appliance..." from the File menu.

4. Select the .ova file and follow the onscreen instructions; default options are fine. You will need at least 2GB of additional RAM beyond what your OS and other running programs require, and 8GB of hard disk space.

5. Select the new virtual machine and start it up.

6. Once the VM has booted (be patient - you may see a black screen in the VM for a minute or two on first startup), select "Terminal Emulator" from the menu (blue icon) in the upper left corner.

Known issues: Windows users who have Hyper-V/Hypervision will have to uninstall it (or maybe just disable it) to run the VM (coreinfo.exe may be useful in checking what is happening - see also http://superuser.com/a/768845). If you obtain an error about USB 2.0 support, install the VirtualBox extensions (just download and launch the extensions, no need to reimport the appliance). If you get an error about 64-bit mode, you may need to enable virtualization in the BIOS of your laptop (a symptom of this is that the Acceleration Tab is greyed out in Settings / System in VirtualBox).

If you use Linux or MacOS X, you can install the ACE parser/generator and the English Resource Grammar natively on your machine (i.e. without using VirtualBox); however, file names and support software may not be configured as assumed for the tutorial. The ACE homepage has the relevant links and some instructions; you may also find AceTop (in particular AceInstall and AceLui) useful.

Serious users will also find the so-called LOGON tree of interest. This collection of software includes tools for grammar engineering, converting between output formats, inspecting and annotating treebanks, parsing and generating, and more. See ErgProcessing and LogonTop (especially LogonInstallation) for instructions and more details.

The above instructions for setting up VirtualBox are largely inspired by these instructions for KnoppixLKB. Our thanks go to David Brodbeck for his assistance in preparing the tutorial VirtualBox appliance.

The slides used in the LREC tutorial are temporarily here