Run Galaxy Locally on older iMac

Does anyone know if it’s possible to do a local install of Galaxy on an older iMac? Can only update to OS X 10.13 and have about 150 GB of free space. Can I use an external drive for data? I have lots of space available there…Thanks!!!

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It may be possible, but you’re likely to encounter numerous issues along the way, and it’s questionable whether the end result will be worth the effort.
The one real limiting factor in the end would probably be RAM. I assume your system does not have more than 4GB memory? Then you may be able to get Galaxy running, but most likely you won’t have enough free memory left to do any kind of interesting analyses with it.

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Hi @WHBIO

A “Use Galaxy” choices overview was the focus of a very recent webinar. Perhaps it will help to make a decision about the best-fit Galaxy choice for you, plus others reading this topic later on. There are many ways to use Galaxy – the webinar was specifically about explaining/comparing the choices along with use-case examples. :milky_way:

  • Galaxy Webinar Announcement here at Galaxy Help:
  • This Event’s Details: linked in the announcement above and here is the direct link. Includes slides and the recording.


As an aside, I also agree with @wm75 – you’ll need to pick a different way to use Galaxy if the goal is to perform more analysis. I’m not sure if your stated configuration is sufficient for using a local Galaxy as a way to backup data. But you can review and decide.

As general advice, it is usually a very good idea to keep regular local backups of important data/work – any web or cloud resource, not just Galaxy.

  1. A local Galaxy is a convenient way to review Galaxy data/work backups, in context, not just as files.
  2. Or, you can just backup work performed in Galaxy directly as archives/files (metadata related to Galaxy + the actual independent files). These are portable artifacts that can be loaded into any Galaxy (your own, or public sites).
  • If you choose to do the first, also do the second. Getting data back out of a local Galaxy with 4 GB ram would almost certainly run into resource-related problems.

Thanks!

Thanks to everyone!!! I did attend that webinar and it was very useful. I have 8 GB of RAM and an external drive so I think I’ll give it a try and see what happens. If I have problem I’ll move on quickly knowing now what the issues may be. Thanks again!

| jennaj
December 16 |

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Hi @WHBIO

A “Use Galaxy” choices overview was the focus of a very recent webinar. Perhaps it will help to make a decision about the best-fit Galaxy choice for you, plus others reading this topic later on. There are many ways to use Galaxy – the webinar was specifically about explaining/comparing the choices along with use-case examples. :milky_way:

  • Galaxy Webinar Announcement here at Galaxy Help:

Dec 9 Webinar: Use Galaxy on the web, the cloud, and your laptop too

This Galaxy webinar will introduce the many options for using Galaxy right now, anywhere in the world. We’ll cover Publicly accessible Galaxy servers on the web (there are over 100 of them) Research and commercial cloud platforms, from Australia (Nectar) to the US (Jetstream, AnVIL), and everywhere in between (CloudLaunch) On your laptop, using pre-packaged containers and virtual machines. The webinar will be at 11am Eastern US time (see your time). Enis Afgan, Anton Nekrutenko, and Mike Scha…

  • This Event’s Details: linked in the announcement above and here is the direct link. Includes slides and the recording.

galaxyproject.org

Webinar: Use Galaxy on the web, the cloud, and your laptop too

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