README.md

NCI Gadi Containers

Containers are built similar to the apptainer site, but in two stages. The first stage runs in 'copyq' which has internet access, the second stage runs on the compute nodes for faster builds.

NCI containers make use of NCI's pre-installed compilers and MPI. Images are not portable to other sites, for portable images use the apptainer site directory.

Building the environment

A container can be built with

# Install an environment
./site/nci/install.sh lfric

By default the container will be installed into /scratch/$PROJECT/$USER/ngmo-envs. Modules are provided, which can be loaded with:

module use /scratch/$PROJECT/$USER/ngmo-envs/modules
module load ngmo-envs/lfric

Using container environments

Make sure the container environment's bin/ directory is on your PATH, e.g. by loading the module:

module use /scratch/$PROJECT/$USER/ngmo-envs/modules
module load ngmo-envs/lfric

Run commands inside the container using the envrun script. If you build an executable inside the container you must also run it inside the container.

envrun make
envrun mpirun -n 6 lfric

Developing environments

Develop environments in our local mirror of this repository at https://git.nci.org.au/bom/ngm/ngmo-environments/. CI is set up to automatically build branches, the built environments are usable with

module use /scratch/hc46/hc46_gitlab/ngm/modules
module load ngmo-envs/lfric/$BRANCH

Once a change has been developed locally create a pull request on the Met Office repository https://github.com/metoffice/ngmo-environments to make it available at all sites.

Builds off of the Met Office repository are usable with

module use /g/data/access/ngm/modules/envs
module load lfric