This time, there is specialized images for 32 and 64 bits. Get GêBR Live DVD from download area.

But the 0.20.1 was not only about fixing the past, it moves forward presenting a new tab, which centralizes many common actions, like create, setup and run flows, as well as inspect their results. The user will no longer spend time bouncing from one tab to another.

A brief highlight of the news in this release is:

• Powered Flows tab: This tab merges all functions of the previous Flow Browse and Flow Edit tabs, which no longer exist separately. The context is also explored to offer the users the best information possible concerning the action which is been carried on. For example, when a new flow button is activated, the list of installed menus is automatically displayed, when a flow is selected, its most important parameters are summarized, when a flow is submitted for execution, its output is shown on the fly, and so on.
• Visual hierarchy of snapshots: It dates from ancient times the feature of take snapshots of the current state of a flow, and restore that states anytime. However those snapshots were not organized. They are now. It is possible to track them visually, knowing which states derive from whom.
• Easy bootstrap: To those who use GêBR for the first time, initial setup is no longer required. No more questions about maestros, working nodes, passwords, and so on. Don’t you know what does this mean? Never mind, you don’t need to know that anymore.
• Automatic grabbing of working nodes: Anytime the user access a new machine, its resources are registered by GêBR and a network of working nodes is being composed this way. No user intervention is needed. This is the easiest way to take advantage of many computers on a lab, putting them to cooperate to run your flows.

Many other minor improvements were made to provide a better and more intuitive experience to the users. Not all of them are properly documented yet. This should be fixed soon, at least with newer versions of the on line documentation.

• SEG Wiki – Open Data
• University of Texas at Austin - Academic seismic portal
• SEG Software
• USGS – Seismic data
• USGS – Marine seismic surveys
• OpendTect – Open seismic repository
• NOAA – Marine seismic refletion
• SPOT – Seismic data directory

This release brings wizards to simplify all that connection process, turning it now almost painless. But 0.18.0 is not only about fixing 0.16.0 drawbacks. There are many more improvements to mention:

• Attached to each Line, a standard hierarchy of folders is now implied. That structure eases the dealing with files produced or accessed during the processing of a data.
• A wizard helps to create new Lines, instructing the user on the setup of that hierarchy of folder.
• Whenever the user hits a file chooser button, the browse will take place at the working machines, where de facto all the processing is happening. This is referenced as remote browsing.
• English documentation completely revisited.
• Dozens of bugs fixed.
• Support to new releases of main Linux distributions, like Ubuntu Precise and CentOS 6.

EAGE Workshop ‘Open-source E+P Software – Six Years Later’ is being held on Friday 8 June at the Bella Center in Copenhagen immediately after the Annual Meeting. Open-source software has a valuable role in exploration geoscience and this is an excellent opportunity to catch up with developments. Read more…

Seismic Un*x (SU), fully integrated with GêBR, is the major set of programs for seismic processing employed by GêBR users. However, to take full advantage of this package through GêBR, it is up to the users install SU properly in their systems.

Despite well documented, the whole install process of SU might be cumbersome to new users. To made this task easier, GêBR Project provides a script to carry out all necessary steps to install SU properly, at least on Ubuntu systems. The script, updated to install the latest version of SU (43R1), has been tested on Ubuntu LTS 10.04, but should work on newer ones too.

Follow these steps to install SU:

1. Download the script from GêBR repository.
2. Open a shell terminal: For Ubuntus with Gnome, it is found at Applications -> Accessories. For recent Ubuntus with Unity, go to “Dash Home”  and type Terminal in search box.
3. Go to the directory where the script was downloaded.
4. Run the script:
   

   chmod +x gebr-su-install.sh
./gebr-su-install.sh

This script will (1) download the latest release of SU from the official repository; (2) check your system for missing dependencies; (3) resolve conflicts with previous installs of SU, that had been also installed through this script; and (4) install SU.

This install process can be accomplished through GêBR as well. Just save the script into your $HOME/bin directory (make sure this directory is listed in PATH shell variable). Download this GêBR project and import it to GêBR. You will see flows to install and then test Seismic Unix.

NOTE: To install SU you must have administration privileges on the machine.

Further options of script are described in its help help. Type ./gebr-su-install.sh -h to see it.

Better than that, the Maestro can put many servers together to cooperate to conclude a job. Whenever a job can be split into small independent parts, the Maestro can distribute them to several servers. The Maestro is still in charge of collecting all responses, merge them and send it back to GêBR, where the user can inspect it as a whole.
The user can still interfere in this process, choosing how agressive the Maestro will be in the hunting for resources.

Quantities defined in the dictionary can be shared among all flows of a line, for example. So, using variables to represent common quantities is the easiest way to keep all parameters consistently defined through the flows of a line.

Loop support is the second major improvement in this release. A flow can be executed multiple times (with slightly different parameters), by setting an iteration loop.

Besides, a large collection of processing flows, based on the well-stablished seismic processing package SU, is released together with SU menus. Those samples are accessable through Help/Samples in the menubar.

As usual, binary packages are distributed to major Linux distros.

From now on, GêBR takes care of generating detailed reports for flows and lines (project are still to come). The flow’s report brings the list of programs in the flow, input and output files selected, and the parameters of each program (with customizable level of detail). The user still has the opportunity to include its own comments to such reports. The line’s report, besides the list of the flows in the lines, can also include the flow’s reports to each flow of the line. In this way, an text can be easily assembled to document all flows of a line and the line itself.

Furthermore, new versions of the menus for SU (now with sample projects demonstrating for many common tasks in seismic processing) and Shell Tools are also being released.

Great effort was done to bring an up to date documentation to the GêBR interface, both in English and in Portuguese. Comments and suggestions are always welcome.