# Notes for 20210303 meeting

(should be copied to https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/meeting-Mar-4-2021)

---

* date & time: Thu Mar 4th 2021 - 2pm CET (1pm UTC)
* (every first Thursday of the month)
* venue: *(online, see mail for meeting link, or ask in Slack)*
* agenda:
- Quick introduction by new people
- EESSI-related meetings in last month
- S4 NeIC project proposal
- Experiences with 2020.12 pilot repository
- 2021.02 version of pilot repository: status
- Updates on sponsorship by Azure/AWS
- Call to action for 2021.02 pilot
- Past & upcoming events
- Q&A

### Slides

* see https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/blob/main/meetings/EESSI_meeting_20210304.pdf

### Meeting notes

*(by Bob, Kenneth)*

#### Introduction by new people

- New people on the call:
- Kurt Lust (UAntwerpen + LUMI User Support Team)
- Dennis Terhorst (Jülich Supercomputing Centre)
- Alfred Gil (HPCNow!)
- Pierre-Yves Defosse (LuxProvide)
- Jörg Sassmannshausen (NIHR Biomedical Research Centre, UK)
- Kurt Lust has been working on a module file to set up the EESSI environment, see comment in https://github.com/EESSI/software-layer/issues/68
- currently rather static, but good base to work on

#### S4 NeIC project proposal (effort led by Thomas Röblitz)

- More dedicated funding for EESSI
- Deadline: next Wednesday (Mar 10 2021)
- Decision: probably in August
- Alan will take a look at the project proposal (~10 pages)

#### Experiences with 2020.12 pilot repository

There are several options for finding the CUDA (driver) libraries. We need to figure out what works best, and which libaries we need.
- hard symlinks (not good enough for `libcuda.so.1`, path is different for different hosts)
- variable symlink (CernVM-FS feature), may require client configuration if path diverges from default target
- custom path `/opt/eessi/lib` we inject in glibc, requires symlinks to be added in host

#### Progress update

- `master` branches were renamed to `main` in all EESSI repositories

**Filesystem layer**

- no more CVMFS config repo for EESSI
- no real disadvantage as long as we stick to the `eessi-hpc.org` domain
- additional repositories will be picked up (because we use a single master key)

- set `CVMFS_CLIENT_PROFILE=single` instead of `CVMFS_HTTP_PROXY=DIRECT` in your `default.local` when using our new cvmfs-config packages on a single machine without a proxy; if you do have a proxy, still set `CVMFS_HTTP_PROXY` manually.

- Volunteers for setting up a Stratum 1 in AWS: Jörg

**Compatibility layer**

- QEMU allows us to run checks via Github Actions for all architectures, see: https://github.com/EESSI/compatibility-layer/pull/85/checks?check_run_id=2007040272
- Open issue about a more extensive test suite for compatibility layer, which can be run from the playbook, Github Actions, cron jobs, etc:
https://github.com/EESSI/compatibility-layer/issues/42

**Software layer**

- Kenneth did a first attempt to create a Github Action that can do quick test runs of some apps using the test scripts in the `eessi-demo` repo: https://github.com/EESSI/eessi-demo/actions/runs/611850589
- Similarly, the following Action uses easystacks to check the (installation) status of the software layer, by checking for missing modules: https://github.com/EESSI/software-layer/pull/74

**Infrastructure repo**

- Scripts/tools to deploy both dynamic (e.g. build nodes) and static (e.g. login node, Stratum 1) virtual machines
- It would be useful to organize a training session at some point to demonstrate how all of this works
- For now, Terje keeps playing with this, probably not worth using PR workflow just yet (just push to `main` branch)

#### 2021.02 version of pilot repository

- There are compat layers for each CPU arch, but they are some unresolved issues (upstream Lmod package needs to be unmasked for `aarch64` + `ppc64le`, configuring glibc to pick up on `/opt/eessi/lib` isn't work yet).
- No installations in software layer yet (but necessary preparations were made)
- We are probably going to wipe this installation and redo it as version `2021.03`.
- For the software layer we are probably going to support the same hardware targets and more or less the same software.
- Kenneth is figuring out with Nvidia if we can redistribute CUDA in our repo, and if not, what the best workaround is...

#### Updates on sponsorship by Azure/AWS

- We are making good use of the AWS credits
- ~$600 worth of credits spent in AWS in Feb'21 (plenty more sponsored credits left in AWS)
- No updates on the Azure sponsorship...

#### Call to action for 2021.02 pilot

- If you want to help, let us know on Slack!
- Setting up additional Stratum 1 servers + proxies in AWS
- Building software for different CPU targets in 2021.03 (probably) version of pilot repo

#### Past & upcoming events

- If anyone has EESSI meetings/presentations planned or knows of interesting opportunities, let it know!

#### Q&A
- Jörg: can we add more bioinformatics tools?
- We deliberately started with a very minimal list that just contains a few applications from different fields. But, especially if it attracts more people, we can add a few more tools. If you want this, try to test it locally and open a PR to have it included in the build script. We are still working on better documentation for the build process.