Conference notes for 2022 09 06

Agenda for Lmod Zoom Mtg Sept. 6th 2022 - 9:30 Central (14:30 UTC)

Attendees

• Robert McLay (TACC)
• Matthew Cawood (TACC)
• Kenneth Hoste (HPC-UGent)
• Sebastien Moretti (SIB)
• Joey Dumont (Governement of Canada)
• Raj Ayyampalayam (Genentech/Roche)
• Davide Vanzo (Microsoft Azure)

Notes

• Q/A
• Changes to module --miniConfig
  • Taking Kenneth's suggestion about configuration variable
  • Lmod now reports where configuration variables are set: ml --miniConfig

Changes from Default Configuration
----------------------------------

Name                         Where Set  Default      Value
----                         ---------  -------      -----
LFS_VERSION                  D          1.6.3        1.8.0
LMOD_EXPORT_MODULE           C          yes          no
LMOD_HAVE_LUA_TERM           C          no           yes
LMOD_SETTARG_FULL_SUPPORT    E          no           yes
LMOD_SYSTEM_DEFAULT_MODULES  E          __unknown__  StdEnv

Where Set -> D: default, E: environment, C: configuration
             lmod_cfg: lmod_config.lua SitePkg: SitePackage StdPkg: StandardPackage
             Other: Set somewhere outside of normal locations

• Issue #585: Using install instead of cp

  • Changed rule for system accounts vs. user accounts:
  • Use UID_MIN from /etc/login.defs otherwise 500 for UID_MIN
  • This came up during the same change for XALT

• Issue #595: Switching ~/.lmod.d to use ~/.config/lmod/*. and switching ~/.lmod.d/.cache/* to ~/.cache/lmod/* There are two issues here: the user cache files and collections

  • Cache files:
    • switch ~/.lmod.d/.cache/* to ~/.cache/lmod* immediately cache files are only valid for 24 hours anyway
  • Collections:
    • Write collections to both ~/.lmod.d/ AND ~/.config/lmod for now
    • At a later date (maybe when Lmod 9.0 is released) only write to ~/.config/lmod
    • Chose ~/.config/lmod over ~/.lmod.d/
    • Always read collections from ~/.lmod.d if not available from ~/.config/lmod

• A Request for Nag message to only be reported when a user load (not when a module is loaded as a dependency)

  • Request by Maxime (ComputeCanada - Digital Research Alliance of Canada), but this is probably of general interest
  • Possible solution: support a Lua table as well as original format. Lmod would use both.
  • Possibly add hook support as well.
  • If file name ends with *.lua extension then use this table:

adminT = {
{
    name ={"pattern1", "pattern2"},
    Options={"userOnly"},
    message=[==[Message blah blah blah]==]
},
{
    name ={"pattern1", "pattern2"},
    message=[==[Message2 blah blah blah]==]
},
    ...
}

- maybe specific keys like "userOnly=true" is better?
- additional options to support later could be
    - warning messages vs errors
    - don't print message for members of specific groups

• Possible new feature:

$ module category
---- Category: CFD ----
ABAQUS (1) ANSYS (2)

-- Category: Develop --
ANSYS (2)
[...]

• Thinking on changing how "module unload" works

  • "module unload" re-reads module file to know what needs to be undone in current environment
  • Bigger problem when version of module is not pinned in collection...
  • What if module file has changed (or was removed) since it was loaded, or included in a collection?
  • Support for remembering contents of a module file is already there
  • This could be used to remember how a loaded module file changes the environment (in ModuleTable)
  • Is this worth doing?
  • Some concerns about the amount of information that needs to be stored per loaded module
    • Especially in csh
  • For some software in EasyBuild (lots of dependencies), over 100 modules could get loaded
    • Kenneth can provide an example module tree to Robert to play around with
  • Contents of actual module file would need to be saved in memory
    • Since some operations could be guarded by a condition (example: only on load)
    • Some parts (description, etc.) could be stripped out though

• Presentation on How Lmod loads a modulefile (Part 2). Slides found here: https://github.com/TACC/Lmod/blob/master/my_docs/22/lmod_zoom_mtg_2022_09_06/presentation.pdf

  • postponed until next Lmod monthly meeting

• Next meeting: Tue 4 Oct 2022 - 9:30 Central (14:30 UTC)