Central software stack

This exercise aims to give you hands-on experience with the central software stack and the Lmod module system used on VSC clusters. You will learn how to discover available software, load modules, inspect dependencies, and understand how modules affect your environment. The exercise should take approximately 30 minutes.

We will use tblite, a software package that provides both a command-line application and Python bindings. However, you can also work through these exercises using a software package of your own choosing.

You can find the relevant documentation in the “Central software stack” section of the GSSI training material and in the Module system basics, Cluster modules sections on VSCDocs.

Here are some questions to help you explore the module systemon a VSC cluster:

• Which versions of tblite are available on the cluster?
• Do you notice any difference in the outputs between module avail and module spider?
• Which dependencies does the tblite/0.4.0-gfbf-2024a module have?
• When loading the tblite/0.4.0-gfbf-2024a module, which changes are made in the environment w.r.t. the tblite command and tblite Python bindings?
• Which module for matplotlib is compatible with the tblite/0.4.0-gfbf-2024a module?
• Which module for tqdm is compatible with tblite/0.4.0-gfbf-2024a?
• Which module (that is compatible with the already loaded modules) provides numpy?
• How many Python packages are available after loading the modules for tblite, matplotlib, and tqdm?
• What happens if you try to load a module that is incompatible with one of the already loaded modules?
• What happens to your environment when you unload the tblite module?
• How can you restore the default module environment of the cluster?