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> a large portion of research computing standardized on Red Hat (see e.g. Scientific Linux). The stability is quite important when trying to run ancient/niche s
by pxc 3y ago
> a large portion of research computing standardized on Red Hat (see e.g. Scientific Linux). The stability is quite important when trying to run ancient/niche scientific code that sometimes would only support (or even build on) Red Hat
> I hope at this current juncture the HPC community might rethink its investment in the RHAT ecosystem and give Debian a chance.
Nowadays Nix and Guix are available, and they're fundamentally better fits for this problem. Traditional Linux package managers aren't really suited to scientific reproducibility or archival work. It would be much better to turn more towards functional package management than just swap in another distro.
- bayindirh 3y ago> Nowadays Nix and Guix are available, and they're fundamentally better fits for this problem. No, it's not. First of all, reproducible installations for HPC nodes is a solved problem (we have xCAT to boot, for example). However the biggest factor is the hardware we use on these nodes. An HPC node contains an Infiniband interface, at least, and you generally use manufacturer provided OFED for optimal performance, which requires a supported kernel.
- pxc 3y agoI wasn't talking about NixOS or GuixSD, or OS installation. I was talking about tools that let you run ancient software on modern distros. With Nix and Guix you don't have to hold your whole OS back just to run 'ancient software'.
- bayindirh 3y agoWe use user mode containers for that. Mostly Apptainer. It supports MPI, GPU and other bells and whistles that we need.