Installing SBGrid Software
Using the SBGrid Environment
Support for Site Administrators
Hardware Support Notes
Getting Help
Support for Developers
The SBGrid software collection can be installed on Linux and macOS from laptops to compute clusters. Often, in a shared computing environment, it is desirable to install the entire collection as a managed, self-updating software stack. We refer to this installation mode as a site install. Site installations include all the software licensed by a site and can be updated automatically.
The SBGrid Software Suite can be installed on a single computer at your site and shared via a network filesystem (NFS) with the workstations or compute nodes on your network. We refer to this computer as the site "master" server.
The master server will require at least 2Tb of free disk space, case-sensitive file system strongly recommended. This machine and must run some variety of UNIX (Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, etc). The installation script will download the software branches you select, and install a cron job that will run regularly to check for updates.
Software installation and update are initiated from your local server at your site and downloaded from our servers. http is used to query our servers to check for update, and rsync is used to download the updates. Outbound HTTP, and RSYNC is necessary.
NOTE - for Linux and macOS, the sbgrid-cli utility should be used to install and manage an installation. This approach has a number of benefits over the script-based install below and is available for Linux and macOS only. See the sbgrid-cli recommened installation page for more information
| Installation Requirements | |
|---|---|
| Hard Drive Space | ~2 Tb recommended for full installation (all titles and versions for mac & linux |
| Operating System | Linux, macOS / OS X |
| Privileges | Administrator account needed only to create install path (/programs) |
| Network | Outbound https, rsync (ports 443 and 873 or 8080) |
| Branch | size |
|---|---|
| i386-mac | ~500 Gb |
| x86_64-linux | ~2.0 Tb |
| shared files | ~50 Gb |
Size breakdown of titles in a typical installation
Email accounts@sbgrid.org to request the installation script for the software. Be sure to include the following information in your email:
* Lab Name
* Types of computers on site: Linux, OS X Intel
* The names and email addresses of lab members that will use the software. One user may be designated to receive the majority of our correspondence if you would prefer not to hear from us too often.
Once the email has been received and your information has been entered into our system, we will email you a script you will run that will begin the remote installation process. Instructions for running the script will be included in that email, and are reproduced below for reference.
As state above, the sbgrid-cli utility should be used to install and manage an installation. This approach has a number of benefits over the script-based install. See the sbgrid-cli recommened installation page for more information. A site installation can also be performed using the sbgrid-admin script : sbgrid-admin utility. This approach is currently supported but will be deprecated in the future.
chmod +x sbgrid-admin
./sbgrid-admin -i
ln -s /path/to/sbgrid/installation /programs
. /programs/sbgrid.shrc For csh and tcsh, add the following line to your ~/.cshrc: source /programs/sbgrid.cshrc
Since the IRIX software branch is frozen and no longer receiving updates, it is not installed and updated in the same manner as the active software branches. If you would like access to SGI IRIX softare, please let us know at bugs@sbgrid.org. Also note that the IRIX branch is only compatible with tcsh; there is no sh-compatible configuration for this branch.