Modules and Available Third Party Software

TCL Modules and available third party software

Modules

“Modules” makes it easier for users to run a standard or customized application and/or system environment. HPCC uses Lmod - an advanced module system that easily handles the MODULEPATH hierarchical problem common in UNIX based "modules" implementation. Application packages can be loaded and unloaded cleanly through the module system using modulefiles. This includes easily adding or removing directories to the PATH environment variable. Modulefiles for Library packages provide environment variables that specify where the library and header files can be found.

All the popular shells are supported: bash, ksh, csh, tcsh, zsh. LMOD is also available for perl and python. Modules is available on KARLE, PENZIAS, APPEL and SALK.

Modules - getting started

The basic module commands are listed below. Note that almost all applications have default version and several other versions. The default version is marked with (D). For example:

python/2.7.13_anaconda       (D)

The default version can be loaded via its short name: . Non default version(s) require use of their full name. For example:

module load python

will load the default 2.7.13_anaconda version of python interpreter.To load non-default 3.7.6 the user must type

module load python/3.7.6_anaconda 

The module load command can be used to load several application environments at once:

module load package1 package2 ...

For documentation on “Modules”:

man module

For help enter:

module help

To see a list of currently loaded “Modules” run:

module list

To see a complete list of all modules available on the system run:

module avail

To show content of a module enter:

module show <module_name> 

To change from one application to another ( example. default versions of gnu and intel compiler):

module swap gcc intel

To go back to an initial set of modules:

module reset

Using LMOD commands

To get a list of all modules available

module spider

To get information about a specific module

module spider python

Modules for the advanced user

A “Modules” example for advanced users who need to change their environment.

The HPC Center supports a number of different compilers, libraries, and utilities. In addition, at any given time different versions of the software may be installed. “Modules” is employed to define a default environment, which generally satisfies the needs of most users and eliminates the need for the user to create the environment. From time to time, a user may have a specific requirement that differs from the default environment.

In this example, the user wishes to use a version of the NETCDF library on the HPC Center’s Cray Xe6 (SALK) that is compiled with the Portland Group, Inc. (PGI) compiler instead of the installed default version, which was compiled with the Cray compiler. The approach to do this is:

• Run module list to see what modules are loaded by default.

• Determine what modules should be unloaded.

• Determine what modules should be loaded.

• Add the needed modules, i.e., module load

The first step, see what modules are loaded, is shown below.

user@SALK:~> module list
Currently Loaded Modulefiles:

  1) modules/3.2.6.6
  2) nodestat/2.2-1.0400.31264.2.5.gem
  3) sdb/1.0-1.0400.32124.7.19.gem
  4) MySQL/5.0.64-1.0000.5053.22.1
  5) lustre-cray_gem_s/1.8.6_2.6.32.45_0.3.2_1.0400.6453.5.1-1.0400.32127.1.90
  6) udreg/2.3.1-1.0400.4264.3.1.gem
  7) ugni/2.3-1.0400.4374.4.88.gem
  8) gni-headers/2.1-1.0400.4351.3.1.gem
  9) dmapp/3.2.1-1.0400.4255.2.159.gem
 10) xpmem/0.1-2.0400.31280.3.1.gem
 11) hss-llm/6.0.0
 12) Base-opts/1.0.2-1.0400.31284.2.2.gem
 13) xtpe-network-gemini
 14) cce/8.0.7
 15) acml/5.1.0
 16) xt-libsci/11.1.00
 17) pmi/3.0.0-1.0000.8661.28.2807.gem
 18) rca/1.0.0-2.0400.31553.3.58.gem
 19) xt-asyncpe/5.13
 20) atp/1.5.1
 21) PrgEnv-cray/4.0.46
 22) xtpe-mc8
 23) cray-mpich2/5.5.3
 24) SLURM/11.3.0.121723

From the list, we see that the Cray Programming Environment (PrgEnv-cray/4.0.46) and the Cray Compiler environment are loaded (cce/8.0.7) by default. To unload these Cray modules and load in the PGI equivalents we need to know the names of the PGI modules. The module avail command shows this.

 user@SALK:~> module avail
 •
 •
 •

We see that there are several versions of the PGI compilers and two versions of the PGI Programming Environment installed. For this example, we are interested in loading PGI's 12.10 release (not the default, which is pgi/12.6) and the most current release of the PGI programming environment (PrgEnv-pgi/4.0.46), which is the default.

The following module commands will unload the Cray defaults, load the PGI modules mentioned, and load version 4.2.0 of NETCDF compiled with the PGI compilers.

user@SALK:~> module unload PrgEnv-cray
user@SALK:~> module load PrgEnv-pgi
user@SALK:~> module unload pgi
user@SALK:~> module load pgi/12.10
user@SALK:~> 
user@SALK:~> module load netcdf/4.2.0
user@SALK:~>
user@SALK;~> cc -V

/opt/cray/xt-asyncpe/5.13/bin/cc: INFO: Compiling with CRAYPE_COMPILE_TARGET=native.

pgcc 12.10-0 64-bit target on x86-64 Linux 
Copyright 1989-2000, The Portland Group, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2000-2012, STMicroelectronics, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

A few additional comments:

• The first three commands do not include version numbers and will therefore load or unload the current default versions.

• In the third line, we unload the default version of the PGI compiler (version 12.6), which is loaded with the rest of the PGI Programming Environment in the second line. We then load the non-default and more recent release from PGI, version 12.10 in the fourth line.

• Later, we load NETCDF version 4.2.0 which, because we have already loaded the PGI Programming Environment, will load the version of NETCDF 4.2.0 compiled with the PGI compilers.

• Finally, we check to see which compiler the Cray "cc" compiler wrapper actually invokes after this sequence of module commands by again entering module list.