Apptainer#

Apptainer is a containerisation platform, and allows users to package up collections of software in a reproducible and portable fashion. Containers built on your work laptop, for instance, can be simply copied over onto the HPC to run there. For usage instructions and further explanations, please see the official user documentaion.

The Apptainer module on Aire#

Version

Load Command

1.3.6

module load apptainer/1.3.6

Running Apptainer containers#

To run an Apptainer container, use the following command:

apptainer run my_container.sif

For use with MPI, please see the excellent guide in the official documentation, which includes examples for use with Slurm.

Building Apptainer containers#

To build an Apptainer container from a definition file, use the following command:

apptainer build my_container.sif my_definition.def

Note

More information regarding containeration and use a container can be found in HPC2 training course.