Working with Apptainer containers

October 10th (Part 1) and October 17th (Part 2), 10am–noon Pacific Time

Instructor: Alex Razoumov (SFU)

Target audience: general

Level: beginner

Prerequisites: none

This course is a hands-on introduction to working with Apptainer containers in an HPC environment. Apptainer (formerly Singularity) is a great tool to create custom Linux environments and run off-the-shelf Docker containers on an HPC cluster. We will look at creating new container images, modifying existing images and installing software into them and – if time permits – running parallel codes inside a container.

Software: All attendees will need a remote secure shell (SSH) client installed on their computer in order to participate in the course exercises. On Mac and Linux computers SSH is usually pre-installed (try typing ssh in a terminal to make sure it is there). Many versions of Windows also provide an OpenSSH client by default – try opening PowerShell and typing ssh to see if it is available. If not, then we recommend installing the free Home Edition of MobaXterm.