On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 05:13:23PM -0500, John Reddy wrote: > One of my users, bless his heart, has requested I install a tool called > "modules". That's all he's been able to describe it to me as in terms of > name. Apparently, it's a program that allows users to load or unload > grouped sets of environment variables. > > See, we've got a clustered processing environment with 120 dual-quad nodes > running Scientific Linux 4.x and 5.x (SL is a RHEL derivative like Centos) > with job control via Torque & Moab. We've got three different compilers > with multiple versions each, a variety of implementations of MPI, etc. So a > tool such as this would be useful for my users. > > Now the MPI selection is easily handled with mpi-selector. And I could > probably (easily) enlist that tool for environment selection. However, I'd > like to see if I can find someone using the tool my user requested. > > TIA for any thoughts on the matter.
John, We use modules/modulefiles extensively at $WORK. It's very popular at HPC sites, and most of the HPC vendors support it. The syntax of the module files is very straightforward. One big advantage over the mpi-selector is that you can set up dependencies among modules. So, e.g., if you have a library that's compiled for a specific compiler and MPI version, you can have that library's module depend on the modules for the required compiler and mpi versions. You can also do things like: module swap pgi/8.0.1 pgi/9.0.2 and it will kill the old environment for PGI 8.0.1 and merge the environment for PGI 9.0.2 One thing we do is provide modules for software we make available but don't support. When the users load those modules, there is a message printed to STDOUT (iirc) informing them they're using the unsupport software at their own risk. We use it for setting PATH, LD_LIBRARY_PATH, MANPATH, etc. We load a set of default modules for every user at login. Anything specific you'd like to know? -jkl _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
