Install Software/Libraries
You can install software/libraries specific to your needs into any location on a system that you have write access to. These locations are generally:
Home
Projects (recommended)
Scratch or work (not recommended - but good for testing the installation process)
Use What is Already Available
NCSA systems include a lot of pre-installed software. You can leverage (build against) a system’s built-in software/library installations. Run the following command to see what is already available.
module avail
When you find the software/library you want, use the following command to load it into your environment. (Replace <module_name> with the name of the module you want to load).
module load <module_name>
Software/Library that isn’t Pre-Installed
Software/library installation instructions generally assume that the installer has Admin, Root, SU or SUDO access to the system that they are installing the software/library on. You do not have this level of access on NCSA computing systems; it would make a cluster unstable/unreliable if users could install software/libraries into the system locations. Providing users with root/sudo access could allow users to uninstall, update, and/or modify software and libraries out from underneath one another.
On NCSA systems, user-installed software/libraries must be installed without the use of privileged installation commands like sudo, yum, apt-get, and rpm. This can generally require building software/libraries from source, specifying a non-system installation directory, and setting environment variables. In some cases, specific software/libraries can be installed via an anaconda environment.
The following sections have additional system-specific information:
If there is a software/library that you think should be installed on a system for all users, submit a support request and system admins will review your request for broad applicability and installation effort.