Installed Software

Software packages on C3 are available as Lmod modules and/or Spack packages. Here we will cover how to use the provided software environment.

Modules (Lmod)

To list available modules:

module avail

Default module version

If there are multiple versions of the same module, one of them will be the default version, marked with a (D). If you load a module without specifying a version the default will be chosen.

To check which modules are currently loaded:

module list

To load a module:

module load <module_name>

To load a specific version:

module load <module_name>/<version>

Example

module load cuda/11.0

To unload a module:

module unload <module_name>

To swap one module for another:

module swap <module_name>/<version> <module_name>/<version>

Example

module switch cuda/12.8 cuda/11.0

To unload all modules:

module purge

To get information about a module:

module spider <module_name>

Example

[user@srvlogin03 ~]$ module spider cuda

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
cuda:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Versions:
        cuda/11.0
        cuda/12.8
    Other possible modules matches:
        nvhpc-hpcx-2.20-cuda12  nvhpc-hpcx-cuda12

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To find other possible module matches execute:

    $ module -r spider '.*cuda.*'

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For detailed information about a specific "cuda" package (including how to load the modules) use the module's full name.
Note that names that have a trailing (E) are extensions provided by other modules.
For example:

    $ module spider cuda/12.8
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

For more information please check the official Lmod documentation.

Spack

Many software packages on the cluster are available through Spack. To access them you must activate the cluster Spack instance, aka global Spack:

SPACK_GLOBAL_ROOT=/opt/ohpc/pub/spack
source ${SPACK_GLOBAL_ROOT}/share/spack/setup-env.sh

You can put those two lines in your ~/.bashrc to have global Spack automatically activated every time you log in.

Now we will go through some commonly used Spack commands. You can check the official Spack documentation for more details.

Basic commands

List available packages:

spack find

Load a package:

spack load <package>

Check which packages you have loaded:

spack find --loaded

Unload a package:

spack unload <package>

Advanced commands

List available packages with more details (variants, i.e. compilation options):

spack find -v

Check package information (source, versions, variants):

spack info <package>

List packages that were compiled with a specific compiler:

spack find %<compiler>@<version>

Example

spack find %gcc@12.2.0

List available packages with their installation path:

spack find -p

There could be multiple instances of the same package, with different versions and/or variants. Each package has a unique hash to identify it. List packages with hash:

spack find -l

Load a specific package instance using the hash:

spack load <package>/<hash>

Let us say you need a specific version of mpich that uses UCX. First list the available packages:

spack find -vl mpich

Available MPICH packages

-- linux-rocky8-zen3 / aocc@5.0.0 -------------------------------
ulhdpg3 mpich@4.2.2~argobots~cuda+fortran~hcoll+hwloc+hydra~level_zero+libxml2+pci~rocm+romio~slurm+vci+verbs+wrapperrpath~xpmem build_system=autotools datatype-engine=auto device=ch4 netmod=ucx pmi=default
r4faawj mpich@4.2.2~argobots~cuda+fortran+hwloc+hydra~level_zero+libxml2+pci~rocm+romio~slurm+vci+verbs+wrapperrpath~xpmem build_system=autotools datatype-engine=auto device=ch4 netmod=ofi pmi=default
==> 2 installed packages

Now load the UCX one:

spack load mpich/ulhdpg3

Custom Software

If you need additional software, you can try to install it through Spack following this guide.

If you cannot install it on your own, please contact us at c3-uc3m@uc3m.es