[Beowulf] Gentoo in the HPC environment

[John Hearns]

Jonathan,
you install the compiler in a different root in the filesystem.
then you use the 'Modules' environment to set your path and library
paths appropriately.

For instance SuSE SLES has the system gcc version, but they recognise
that you might want a more modern gcc version. So you enable the
relevant software repository and can (say) install gcc 4.7 in a
location which will not clash with the system gcc version.
For the life of me I can't remember the SLES location.

Also look at software packages like OpenFoam - to download and compile
it up you get a huge tarball. One of the first things you need to do
is get the exact version of gcc which Openfoam likes - which is
included in the tarball, and is placed under the Openfoam build root.

I could go on. Many commercial software packages come complet in a
tarball with a whole environment - libraries, specific Python
versions, you name it.
You start the application actually by running a script, which contains
the software root directory then goes off and again sets your path and
library path.
The commercial software vendors simply cannot support the plethora of
different versions they would be presented with otherwise.

Such tarballs are a clear candidate for install in a Docker container.







On 03/07/2014, Jonathan Aquilina <jaquilina at eagleeyet.net> wrote:
> What I am not understanding though, going back to compilers, is how one
> isolates the different versions.
>
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>> On 02/07/14 16:19, Jonathan Aquilina wrote:
>>
>>> How would the same arguments apply if you are just dealing with
>>> dns servers web servers databases etc.
>>
>> Sorry, I thought we were still talking about dealing with multiple
>> compiler versions in HPC.
>>
>> The things you mention are services that Docker targets where you have
>> a container per service with all its dependencies included.
>>
>> All the best,
>> Chris
>> - --
>>  Christopher Samuel        Senior Systems Administrator
>>  VLSCI - Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative
>>  Email: samuel at unimelb.edu.au Phone: +61 (0)3 903 55545
>>  http://www.vlsci.org.au/      http://twitter.com/vlsci
>>
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