Software on Talapas is managed via "environment modules". If you need to run a particular software package, you can search for a module associated with that package, and load it. The module contains everything required by your shell environment for running the software, including any dependencies the software may have. Using environment modules makes it very convenient to switch from one version of a software package to another.
LMod is used to manage your software environment on Talapas. This HOWTO contains some common use cases for LMod.
To see modules currently loaded in your environment:
$ module list
The "slurm" and "intel" modules are pre-loaded into your environment by default.
To see what modules are currently available to you:
$ module avail
To load a software package, e.g. matlab:
$ module load matlab
If there are multiple versions of a software package (e.g. matlab/r2016b and matlab/r2017a), then the most recent version (matlab/r2017a) is often the version loaded by default.
To load a specific version of a package, e.g. matlab/r2016b:
$ module load matlab/r2016b
To unload a software package, e.g. matlab:
$ module unload matlab
or
$ module unload matlab/r2016b
LMod supports module heirarchy. This means that some packages may conflict with your currrent environment and therefore will be not be available and or visible via "module avail" - conflicting packages are under a different heirarchy. An example of this would be an OpenMPI package that was built with a recent version of the GCC6 compiler and sits under the GCC6 heirarchy, but it is not visible because it conflicts with the OpenMPI package under the Intel heirarchy that was built using the Intel compiler, which is loaded into your environment by default. To search for software packages that are not visible to your current environment, you can use "module spider", which will list all possible modules in your MODULEPATH.
To search for all possible versions of a package, e.g. openmpi:
$ module spider openmpi
(note: the gcc6/openmpi package does not yet exist, but this serves as a great example. To be continued...)
This should be enough to get you started, but stay tuned, there is more to come!
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