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Overview

On this page you find guidance on ways to install additional software on LUMI. A full overview of software that is either installed in the LUMI software stacks, or available as a LUMI-specific build recipe for the EasyBuild package manager, can be found in the LUMI software library. If you are looking for information on how to develop your own software on LUMI, consult the developing section instead. Please note that the LUMI user support team can only offer limited help with installing scientific software. This is further explained on the Install policy page.

Warning

The home and project directories reside on the Lustre based parallel file system on LUMI-P which does not perform well with installations of software containing a lot of small files, e.g. Python or R environments installed via Conda or pip. For such software a container based approach must be used. See below for the container wrapper approach or use of singularity.

Installing software

We offer three options to install software on LUMI, with varying levels of support.

The three options are:

  • Using EasyBuild:

    EasyBuild is the primary software installation tool on LUMI. It is used to install most software in the central software stack on LUMI, but it is also extremely easy to install additional software in your personal or project space and have it integrate fully with the software stacks.

    An overview of (almost) all software that we provide in the central software stack or for which we provide ready-to-use EasyBuild build recipes for a user installation can be found in the LUMI Software Library.

    Consult the module environment page for instructions on identifying the already available software on LUMI through the module system instead.

  • Spack

    Spack is another popular package manager to install software mostly from sources for optimal performance on HPC systems. We provide a Spack configuration that is configured to use of the compilers available on LUMI and which can install packages in the upstream Spack repository. However, we do no package development ourselves in Spack.

  • Container wrapper

    The container wrapper is a piece of software developed at CSC to package large conda installations or large Python installations built with pip on top of the Cray Python distribution in a single file to reduce the load on the Lustre filesystem that these installations typically cause.

The preferred location for software installations is your project directory, so that a software installation can be shared with all users in your project. Software can be installed in your home directory also but it is not recommended and you will not get additional quota for it. Installing permanent software installations in your scratch or flash directory is not recommended as these will be cleaned automatically in the future when the file system starts to fill up.

Singularity containers

You can bring a Singularity/Apptainer software container and run it using the Singularity container runtime provided by LUMI. However, be aware that LUMI has hardware that is different from most typical small clusters and that the OS used on LUMI is also different from the versions used on those clusters, so you may run into compatibility and performance problems.

The LUMI Software Library

The LUMI software library contains an overview with all software that is installed in the software stacks available through the LUMI modules and the CrayEnv module (apart from the documentation of the HPE Cray Programming Environment). For software installed on the system the first channel to get help on a specific module is through the module help command, but the LUMI Software Library pages sometimes contain more information on how to run the software, or more information about specific options that were chosen when installing the software on LUMI.

Packages with considerable extra information in the LUMI software library:

Local software collections

There are also software available on LUMI installed by local LUMI organizations. These are available for all LUMI users and are updated and supported by the local LUMI organizations themselves, not by LUST.