Singularity

Singularity is a container platform that doesn't elevate the privileges of a user running the container. This is important as UMIACS runs many multi-tenant computer systems and doesn't provide administrative control to users in them.

It can run a variety of images including its own format and Docker images. To create images you however need to have administrative rights and therefore you will need to do this on a host that you have access to (laptop or personal desktop).

First if you are going to pull large images you may run out of space in your home directory so we suggest you run the following commands to setup a alternate cache directory:

export WORKDIR=/scatch0/derek
export SINGULARITY_CACHEDIR=${WORKDIR}/.cache
mkdir -p $SINGULARITY_CACHEDIR

We do suggest you pull images down into an intermediate file (SIF file) as you can then not have to worry about re-caching the image.

$ singularity pull cuda10.2.sif docker://nvidia/cuda:10.2-devel
INFO:    Converting OCI blobs to SIF format
INFO:    Starting build...
Getting image source signatures
Copying blob sha256:7ddbc47eeb70dc7f08e410a6667948b87ff3883024eb41478b44ef9a81bf400c
 25.45 MiB / 25.45 MiB [====================================================] 0s
Copying blob sha256:c1bbdc448b7263673926b8fe2e88491e5083a8b4b06ddfabf311f2fc5f27e2ff
 34.53 KiB / 34.53 KiB [====================================================] 0s
Copying blob sha256:8c3b70e3904492c753652606df4726430426f42ea56e06ea924d6fea7ae162a1
 845 B / 845 B [============================================================] 0s
Copying blob sha256:45d437916d5781043432f2d72608049dcf74ddbd27daa01a25fa63c8f1b9adc4
 162 B / 162 B [============================================================] 0s
Copying blob sha256:d8f1569ddae616589c5a2dabf668fadd250ee9d89253ef16f0cb0c8a9459b322
 6.88 MiB / 6.88 MiB [======================================================] 0s
Copying blob sha256:902fc5ce82298797e09dc1b28ed942da3892a354321725fad6955ee651557e98
 9.00 MiB / 9.00 MiB [======================================================] 0s
Copying blob sha256:ae1bb79c5cfc1c10948684c3a2964ec7444b19cae7edc487aa474804336b52c1
 184 B / 184 B [============================================================] 0s
Copying blob sha256:fa6605c8fe7a3779c56b4768ac46738f160f005067f22c03e3cf5e87ad5d19d0
 674.37 MiB / 674.37 MiB [==================================================] 8s
Copying blob sha256:0508a679d3397b66fdf6cd56db9a99e2b7af5a8519e9f9534d2dff07779f2482
 783.58 MiB / 783.58 MiB [=================================================] 10s
Copying config sha256:44b5f1390c8715653c6488b3cb4fbee875c30cacadc827b2b4372b18318b2fa0
 7.28 KiB / 7.28 KiB [======================================================] 0s
Writing manifest to image destination
Storing signatures
2020/04/14 11:52:55  info unpack layer: sha256:7ddbc47eeb70dc7f08e410a6667948b87ff3883024eb41478b44ef9a81bf400c
2020/04/14 11:52:56  info unpack layer: sha256:c1bbdc448b7263673926b8fe2e88491e5083a8b4b06ddfabf311f2fc5f27e2ff
2020/04/14 11:52:56  info unpack layer: sha256:8c3b70e3904492c753652606df4726430426f42ea56e06ea924d6fea7ae162a1
2020/04/14 11:52:56  info unpack layer: sha256:45d437916d5781043432f2d72608049dcf74ddbd27daa01a25fa63c8f1b9adc4
2020/04/14 11:52:56  info unpack layer: sha256:d8f1569ddae616589c5a2dabf668fadd250ee9d89253ef16f0cb0c8a9459b322
2020/04/14 11:52:57  info unpack layer: sha256:902fc5ce82298797e09dc1b28ed942da3892a354321725fad6955ee651557e98
2020/04/14 11:52:57  info unpack layer: sha256:ae1bb79c5cfc1c10948684c3a2964ec7444b19cae7edc487aa474804336b52c1
2020/04/14 11:52:57  info unpack layer: sha256:fa6605c8fe7a3779c56b4768ac46738f160f005067f22c03e3cf5e87ad5d19d0
2020/04/14 11:53:14  info unpack layer: sha256:0508a679d3397b66fdf6cd56db9a99e2b7af5a8519e9f9534d2dff07779f2482
INFO:    Creating SIF file...
INFO:    Build complete: cuda10.2.sif

Now you can run the local image with the run command or start a shell with the shell command. Please note that if you are in an environment with GPUs and you want to access them inside the container you do need to specify the --nv flag.

$ singularity run --nv cuda10.2.sif nvidia-smi -L
GPU 0: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti (UUID: GPU-9ee980c3-8746-08dd-8e14-82fbaf88367e)