SEA-PHAGES Logo

The official website of the HHMI Science Education Alliance-Phage Hunters Advancing Genomics and Evolutionary Science program.

Welcome to the forums at seaphages.org. Please feel free to ask any questions related to the SEA-PHAGES program. Any logged-in user may post new topics and reply to existing topics. If you'd like to see a new forum created, please contact us using our form or email us at info@seaphages.org.

All posts created by DanRussell

| posted 28 Sep, 2020 14:46
Hi Jasmin,

Those sorts of issues are usually related to the Guest Additions either not being installed or not being up to date. That said, it's not easy to install the Guest Additions if you can't even log into Windows. If she can log into Windows, then once she's in she should go to the Virtual Box menu Devices –> Insert Guest Additions CD Image, then follow the prompts on the Windows screen to install the Guest Additions. Often, until those are installed, the virtual machine won't work seamlessly with your host computer. (You won't be able to resize, or drag and drop, etc.)

–Dan
Posted in: SEA-PHAGES Virtual MachineSEA-PHAGES Virtual Machine Error message
| posted 17 Sep, 2020 19:37
From the first screenshot, it looks like they have a working version of VirtualBox, but not a working version of Windows installed within VirtualBox. Here's the part of the document they need to follow carefully.

2. Download Windows 10
Note that the file you will download at this step can be quite large (~5 Gb) and you
may want to connect via a wired connection or other fast internet before beginning.
Ensure you have enough free hard drive space to download.
a. Go to the Windows 10 download page
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10ISO
b. From the “Select Edition” menu, choose Windows 10.
c. Click Confirm.
d. If prompted, select “English” (or your choice of language) as the language and click
Confirm.
e. Select the 64-bit Download (unless you have a very old computer), and choose a
location to save the file. (It should be a file ending with “.iso”.)
We suggest keeping it in a designated location rather than a Downloads folder. For
example, make a new folder on your Desktop called VMs.
f. Wait for the download to complete before closing browsers or shutting off your
computer.
3. Create a Windows virtual machine
Now you will use VirtualBox to install a Windows “computer” on your Mac.
a. From your applications folder, launch VirtualBox.
b. Click the “New” button to begin creating a new virtual machine.
1. When prompted for a name, write something like “WindowsVM” or “Windows
for SEA-PHAGES”.
2. For “Type”, make sure “Windows” is selected.
3. For “Version”, choose “Windows 10 (64-bit)”.
4. Click “Continue”.
c. Select the amount of RAM to dedicate to your virtual machine.
The higher the number, the faster your Windows machine will run, but it may also
take resources away from your Mac side. We recommend a minimum of 2 Gb
(2048 Mb) and a maximum of half the RAM of your Mac. (Stay in the green area.)
1. In the “Memory Size” panel, select an amount of RAM to dedicate to your
Windows computer.
2. Click Continue.
d. Set up your virtual hard drive.
1. Select “Create a virtual hard disk now”, then click “Create”.
2. Select “VDI (VirtualBox Disk Image)”, then click “Continue”.
3. Select “Dynamically allocated”, then click “Continue”.
4. Select a size for your Windows virtual hard drive. This will be the amount of
space you have available inside your Windows “computer” to save files. We
recommend a minimum of 15 Gb, with a preferred size of at least 20 Gb, as
long as you have space on your Mac to hold it.
5. Click “Create”.
e. Install Windows on your virtual machine.
This step may take up to 30 minutes, so make sure you have time to do this
uninterrupted.
1. Make sure your new machine (e.g. “WindowsVM”) is selected in the VirtualBox
menu, and click “Start”.
2. It should prompt you to select a virtual optical disk. Click the small folder icon,
navigate to the windows iso file you downloaded in Step 2, and select it.
3. Click “Start”.
4. Follow the prompts to choose a language and being the Windows installation.
5. When an “Activate Windows” box appears asking for a product key, click the
link near the bottom that says “I don’t have a product key”.
6. Select “Windows 10 Home” if prompted.
7. Choose “Custom” rather than “Upgrade” from the installation type menu. Click
“Next”.
8. Select your hard drive (should be only one option) and click “Next”.
9. Wait for Windows 10 to install. (This may take a while.)
10. Follow the prompts from “Cortana” to finish the Windows setup. You can
select “Offline account” then “No” if you don’t want to input your email
address or phone number.
11. Choose a user name and password for your Windows account.
12. Continue with Windows setup, answering questions as needed.
13. Eventually, you should be taken to your new Windows Desktop.
14. If your Mac is connected to the internet, your new Windows computer should
be as well. Try opening a browser (Microsoft Edge, for example) and navigating
to phagesdb.org.
15. Congratulations! You’re now running a Windows computer inside your Mac.
NOTE that you should treat this “virtual computer” like a real computer.
Don’t suddenly quit VirtualBox while your Windows machine is running. Instead,
shut down Windows like you would your own computer before closing it.
Sometimes, virtual machines have trouble if you just close your laptop while
they’re running. We suggest shutting down Windows before closing a Mac laptop.
Moreover, since running a whole second operating system requires a lot of
resources, it’s best to only keep your Windows VM open when you’re actively
using it. Shut it down when you won’t need it for a while and it’ll save on RAM and
battery life.
Posted in: DNA MasterMac errors
| posted 17 Sep, 2020 19:22
Hi Tiara,

There are basically two steps to getting DNA Master to work on a Mac. The first is getting a functioning version of Windows installed in VirtualBox. I think that's the problem with the first error in your document. The other errors are related to step 2, installing DNA Master, which will be impossible if you haven't completed step 1.

For step 1 (getting Windows running) are you carefully following the instructions in this document?

https://phagesdb.org/media/docs/InstallingWindowsOnMac.pdf

–Dan
Posted in: DNA MasterMac errors
| posted 02 Sep, 2020 18:51
Hi Tiara,

I haven't encountered that myself before, but perhaps the suggestions on this page will help:

https://medium.com/@DMeechan/fixing-the-installation-failed-virtualbox-error-on-mac-high-sierra-7c421362b5b5


–Dan
Posted in: SEA-PHAGES Virtual MachineVirtual box installation error
| posted 19 Aug, 2020 20:00
Hey Steve,

Seems to be working fine for me at the moment.

–Dan
Posted in: PhameratorPhamerator down?
| posted 09 May, 2020 20:35
Hi Fernando,

No, "None" just means we haven't made a determination for that cluster yet, so it could be either. Some of the clusters are very well known at this point, while others are fairly new and we haven't taken a close look.

–Dan
Posted in: General Message BoardActinobacteriophage database in Phagesdb
| posted 09 Apr, 2020 00:23
Hi Susanne,

The length disparity is almost certainly because of the terminal repeat. When I assembled your genome, it looked clear to me that your it had direct terminal repeats; there was an area of approximately double coverage (compared to the rest of the genome) and flanking reads that started on the same base. That's classic terminal repeat.

In those cases, we generally report the genome with the terminal repeat on each end, as the DNA would actually appear in the phage capsid. The Metroid terminal repeat is around 10kb, which almost certainly accounts for the difference between your assembly and the final file. My initial assembly was also only ~140 kb, but once I added the second copy of the repeat, it went to ~150kb.

Hope that makes sense,
–Dan
Posted in: NewblerNewbler vs minia
| posted 05 Apr, 2020 15:39
Hi Kyle,

Here are a couple options:
Sherwood Casjens' paper about using terminases to determine end types, but it also sort of explains what the ends types might be:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3082370/

A more recent paper about the program PhageTerm, which tries to predict end type from sequencing reads:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-07910-5

Take care,
–Dan
Posted in: AnnotationGene Numbering Questions and More: Phage SilentRX (UNK)
| posted 20 Mar, 2020 01:20
Hi Dan and D'Andrew,

Interesting. I can tell you (as the person who programmed the button on PhagesDB) that the same exact request is sent to GeneMark in both the Mayweather and Kenosha cases. So it must be GeneMark itself that is making a decision about which model/method to use. From the PhagesDB perspective, we don't distinguish based on length or anything.

–Dan
Posted in: AnnotationGeneMark and G rubripertincta
| posted 06 Feb, 2020 17:48
Hi Roy,

I think you've caught things between versions of the Phamerator database. If you go to phamerator.org and click on the little dropdown database menu in the top left, it'll show you what version of the database you're currently viewing. As of now, I see Actino_Draft version 338.

Meanwhile, Chris has recently made a link where you can check the version of the database Starterator is using.
http://phages.wustl.edu/starterator/database.version

Earlier today, it showed 337, but I just checked again and now it's showing 338, so hopefully things are back in sync now.

–Dan
Posted in: StarteratorPham not found in Starterator