# Notes for 20210603 meeting

(should be copied to https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/wiki/meeting-June-3-2021)

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* date & time: Thu June 3rd 2021 - 2pm CEST (12:00 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
- Progress update per EESSI layer
- 2021.03 version of pilot repository: status
- Outlook to next pilot version
- Testing with ReFrame
- AWS/Azure update + infrastructure in AWS
- EESSI paper
- NESSI update
- Upcoming events
- Q&A

### Slides

* see https://github.com/EESSI/meetings/blob/main/meetings/EESSI_meeting_20210603.pdf

### Meeting notes

*(by Bob, Kenneth)*

#### Introduction by new people

- Guilherme Amadio (CERN), Gentoo Prefix developer
- presentation about use of Gentoo Prefix to replace current CERN approach
- at CHEP conference in Sofia, see https://indico.cern.ch/event/587955/contributions/2938043/
- An older paper, written by Benda Xu and Guilherme, also about Gentoo prefix and its potential usage in HPC environments: https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.02742
- Lucy (UiO), colleague of Terje

#### EESSI-related meetings in last month

- hoping that a better solution is possible for the CernVM-FS corruption issue when doing in-place updates
- the symlinks workaround is going to be a PITA, just symlinkin libc.so is not enough
- Guilherme: clients could stick to a particular version/snapshot of the repo
- Guilherme is physically located in the same building as Jakob Blomer (CernVM-FS lead dev), could help with making it clear this problem is important for the HPC community (Compute Canada + EESSI)

#### Progress update per EESSI layer

- *(see slides)*

#### 2021.03 version of pilot repository: status

- this version will probably not be extended anymore, instead we aim for a new version (2021.06?)

#### Outlook to next pilot version

- main focus would be to automate the ingestion of software installations from build node to Stratum 0

#### Testing with ReFrame

- Plan is start setting up tests using ReFrame library approach
- Caspar is planning to rework his GROMACS/TensorFlow tests

#### Sponsorship AWS/Azure

- AWS credtis are being put to good use
- things have started moving w.r.t. Azure sponsorship, more info soon...

#### AWS infrastructure

- S3 bucket available to facilitate ingestion of software install tarballs from build node to Stratum 1

#### EESSI paper

- submitted paper available for request, contact Thomas Röblitz
- topics covered:
- context & motivation
- high-level overview
- instructions for getting access to EESSI pilot repo
- use cases
- performance evaluation
- related work
- future work
- notification expected by end of July'21
- final revision due a couple of weeks later

#### NESSI update

- EESSI test setup is live on Saga, coming soon on Fram...

#### Q&A

- Guilherme: For software installed with Portage, have you tried out using Portage's FEATURES=test to run the tests?
- extra function available to provide additional tests that can be run during the installation
- https://packages.gentoo.org/useflags/test
- Guilherme: worth evaluating GROMACS installation provided via Gentoo Prefix?
- Guilherme: using busybox as an OS in build host to prevent picking up stuff from host
- Guilherme: EESSI approach could be interesting for CERN as well
- they're currently rebuilding the software stack for a bunch of different operating systems...
- strong focus on Spack currently, ongoing effort for years...
- interesting applications: ROOT, Geant4