Installing SBGrid Software
Using the SBGrid Environment
Support for Site Administrators
Hardware Support Notes
Getting Help
Support for Developers
The SBGrid Software Suite can run on computers running Linux and macOS/OS X operating systems.
SBGrid is built on tested on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x, 9.x and their community supported versions.
CentOS 7 reaches End of Life
Ten years ago we announced support for software on CentOS 7 and we’ve been building and running software on that OS ever since. On June 30, 2024, CentOS 7 will reach End of Life and the last of the CentOS 7 security updates.
Rocky Linux and Alma Linux fill the gap left by the discontinued CentOS Linux stable release
Alma and Rocky Linux are both designed to be 100% binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL). Like RHEL, they are focused on long-term stability for production-grade platforms. SBGrid supports both Rocky versions 8 and 9, and Alma versions 8 and 9. We are using Alma Linux internally for our workstations but both distributions are supported and should be nearly identical.
Other Distributions
Many labs also use Ubuntu, Mint, Debian and OpenSuSE with SBGrid. We don't explicitly test the software on distributions other than the RHEL-based distros above, but the majority of the software is known to work on Ubuntu 20 and 22. We will work to resolve problems reported by users of these Linux distributions where possible on a best-effort basis.
SBGrid is supported on Amazon Linux 2 (AL2), though a few titles are known to fail due to older OS libraries used in this distribution (chimeraX).
GPU support
We support a number of titles that run on nVidia GPU hardware. We include the required libraries for these applications and typically only the latest driver for the hardware is required. Due to limitations in a few software titles, versions that rely on older CUDA versions (< CUDA 11.8) may fail on Ampere microarchitecture cards and later. We are working to clarify the compatility for these applications.
We build and test programs for macOS under the most four most recent macOS releases.
Currently Supported:
As above with earlier versions of linux, there are many software applications that are fully functional on earlier versions of MacOSX in the SBGrid tree. We work to maintain an environment compatible with these OS versions, though they may not receive the latest applications.
"Apple Silicon" macs can run most of the software in the collection. Few native applications are currently available, but most 64-bit software works through Apple's Rosetta2 compatility environment. Notable exceptions are applications compiled with Intel compilers (some older Rosetta and RELION verions).
Windows provides Linux compatibility environment called "Windows Subsystem for Linux" (WSL2). WSL2 is still under active development. Users have reported success with SBGrid applications working with WSL2, but we have no experience with Windows can can't provide support. If you have success with SBGrid and WSL2, let us know.
