Virtual DICE is distributed in an image file, which you download.

Before downloading it, please decide which of the ⇒ Editions of Virtual DICE you want, and note the name of the file to download. These instructions assume that you want the teaching edition - its file is called teaching.ova. If you want the basic edition, download its image file (basic.ova) instead.
The image files are large - several gigabytes - and can take a while to download.

There are several ways to download it.

Download over the Web:

First, your computer will need to be on the Edinburgh University network. You can do this by running one of our VPNs.
The ⇒ VPN pages explain about our VPNs.

Then, download Virtual DICE from ⇒ https://vdice.inf.ed.ac.uk/teaching.ova.
If you are shown the weblogin.inf.ed.ac.uk page, do this:

  1. Look for the box labelled ID & Password. You may have to click to open it.
  2. Enter your Informatics "DICE" username and password there.
  3. Click the Login button.
  4. Your download should start.

Download with SSH:

First, your computer will need to be on the Edinburgh University network. You can achieve this by running one of our VPNs.
The ⇒ VPN pages explain about our VPNs.

Then, if your computer has ssh then download the image by typing this command in a terminal window - remembering to replace diceuser with your own DICE username.

scp diceuser@ssh.inf.ed.ac.uk:/afs/inf.ed.ac.uk/group/project/virtualdice/images/teaching.ova teaching.ova

Download from AFS:

If your computer has AFS configured, you can copy the Virtual DICE image file from: 

/afs/inf.ed.ac.uk/group/project/virtualdice/images/teaching.ova

The ⇒ AFS and filesystems pages explain how to install AFS on your computer.

Then check your download

After downloading the ova file, you can check its integrity using an MD5 hash. Do this with one of the commands (in bold) below.

On Linux:

md5sum teaching.ova
0a7fc9543754fb5b2c99fef29fa7cb79  teaching.ova

md5sum basic.ova
1a2d20a03b198eae1d1c56d0796cca27  basic.ova

On Windows:

certutil -hashfile teaching.ova MD5
MD5 hashfile of teaching.ova:
0a7fc9543754fb5b2c99fef29fa7cb79
CertUtil: -hashfile command completed successfully.

certutil -hashfile basic.ova MD5
MD5 hashfile of basic.ova:
1a2d20a03b198eae1d1c56d0796cca27
CertUtil: -hashfile command completed successfully.

Next page

The next page tells you how to ⇒ Install Virtual DICE.

Last reviewed: 
25/09/2024