[mesa-users] using MESA for education

[James Lloyd]

Hi All,

Although I have not taught a course using MESA, I have taught a course that focusses on astronomical computing/data analysis.  In early versions of the course, the students worked in a pre-built and carefully controlled environment on lab computers.  More recently, the students use their own laptops and have to install python/IDL and learn how to install all the extra packages they will need.  All that futzing around with installations and compilers _is_ at least as important as the rest of it to get going in research, so I let it be one of the skills learned in the course.  

Give a student compiled code and you feed him for a day, teach a student to install a compiler and he's running code for a lifetime, or something like that...

Regards,

James

On Jun 8, 2014, at 8:52 PM, Bill Paxton wrote:

> 
> On Jun 8, 2014, at 5:43 PM, Josiah Schwab wrote:
> 
>> 
>> On  8 June 2014 at 12:14 PDT, Dean Townsley wrote:
>> 
>>> My suggestion would be to provide a "live DVD" that can be put on a DVD 
>>> or USB stick and booted on a PC.  One that would contain a linux 
>>> distribution with MESA pre-built and setup.  Then the student could just 
>>> grab some inlists from dropbox or a website and go.  Ideally there might 
>>> be some user data area on a USB stick too.  Or just put important things 
>>> back on dropbox.
>> 
>> As is, MESA (9GB) can't fit on a DVD (4GB).
> 
> 
> How big is it if you don't send all of mesa but instead just what is needed to run mesa/star.
> 
> no source code.  tar files for data.
> 
> i bet you could get that on a DVD.
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> 
>> Does anyone have any experience running MESA in a VM (e.g., VirtualBox)?
>> Any idea how much of a performance hit there is?
>> 
>> A VM image would have the advantage of not requiring the students to
>> provide any installation media.
>> 
>> Josiah
>> 
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> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> HPCC Systems Open Source Big Data Platform from LexisNexis Risk Solutions
> Find What Matters Most in Your Big Data with HPCC Systems
> Open Source. Fast. Scalable. Simple. Ideal for Dirty Data.
> Leverages Graph Analysis for Fast Processing & Easy Data Exploration
> http://www.hpccsystems.com
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