Frontier (OLCF)ΒΆ

frontier is a system at ORNL.

Frontier does not support container execution at this time. glotzerlab-software instead provides a build script and a module environment to create an equivalent software stack.

First, clone the glotzerlab-software repository:

$ git clone https://github.com/glotzerlab/software
$ cd software

If you already have a clone, update it:

$ cd software
$ git pull origin trunk

You should install your software in NFS under $HOME. For example, set the installation root directory to /ccs/home/${USER}/software/frontier/.

Build the software environment and install it into the root:

$ script/frontier/install.sh /ccs/home/${USER}/software/frontier/
... compiling software will take several minutes ...

Activate the environment with:

$ source /ccs/home/${USER}/software/frontier/environment.sh

The environment is a python3 venv. You may extend it with additional python packages using python3 -m pip install:

$ source /ccs/home/${USER}/software/frontier/environment.sh
$ python3 -m pip install package

Importing Python packages from this environment will be very slow with large node count jobs. To improve performance, generate a tar file with the environment and store it on Orion.

Important

Repeat this step after you update the environment or install packages with pip

$ /ccs/home/${USER}/software/frontier/generate-tar-cache.sh \
  ${MEMBERWORK}/{your-project}/software.tar

Tip

Collaborative projects should aim to install and maintain a single copy of the software. This should be installed to the project home as follows:

$ script/frontier/install.sh /ccs/proj/{your-project}/software/frontier/{subproject-name}
... compiling software will take several minutes ...

This allows for changes to the environment to propagate between users, and cuts down on storage usage in the project home directory.

Collaborative projects can also work off of a single cached software.tar:

$ /ccs/proj/{your-project}/software/frontier/{subproject-name}/generate-tar-cache.sh \
    ${PROJWORK}/{your-project}/software/{subproject-name}/software.tar

Use the following commands in your job scripts (or interactively with salloc) to load the cache into NVME and execute software from there:

#SBATCH -C nvme

export GLOTZERLAB_SOFTWARE_ROOT=/mnt/bb/${USER}/software
srun --ntasks-per-node 1 mkdir ${GLOTZERLAB_SOFTWARE_ROOT}
srun --ntasks-per-node 1 tar --directory ${GLOTZERLAB_SOFTWARE_ROOT} -xpf \
  ${MEMBERWORK}/{your-project}/software.tar
# ${PROJWORK}/{your-project}/software.tar # For use with shared projects.
source ${GLOTZERLAB_SOFTWARE_ROOT}/variables.sh

srun {srun options} command arguments