Loading Software Environments Using Modules

We use Lua based modules (Lmod) for packaging software environments on our systems including compilers, MPI, CUDA, debuggers, performance tools or math libraries.

A comprehensive list of all software modules may be found here.

Basic Lmod Commands

The table below summarizes the most common Lmod module commands. Full documentation for Lmod modules can be found at: lmod.readthedocs.io/en/latest/010_user.html.

Module Command

Shortcut

Description

Module Command

Shortcut

Description

module avail

ml avail

List available modules

module -d avail

ml -d avail

List only default modules

module overview | module ov

ml ov

List available modules by short names with number of versions.

module list

ml

Show modules currently loaded

module load package
module add package

ml package

ml load package
ml add package

Load a selected module

module unload package
module rm package

ml unload package
ml rm package

ml -package

Unload a previously loaded module

module swap package1 package2

ml swap package1 package2

Unload package1 and load package2

module purge

ml purge

Unload all loaded modules

module reset

ml reset

Reset loaded modules to system defaults

module display package
module show package

n/a
ml show package

Display the contents of a selected module

module spider

ml spider

List all modules (not just available ones)

module spider package

ml spider package

Display description of a selected module

module keyword key

ml keyword key

Search for available modules by keyword

module, module help

ml help

Display help, usage information for modules

module use path

ml use path

Add path to the MODULPATH search path

Gateway Modules

To minimize the output of module avail, we use so called gateway modules, which change the search path for module files. Most of the software we provide is installed using EasyBuild. Therefore, we follow the naming of EasyBuild for the categories. The initial module avail output will look like this:

[n2login6 ~]$ ml avail

-------------------------- Gateway- and basic modules --------------------------
DefaultModules (L) data (G) math (G) system (G)
all (G) devel (G) mpi (G) toolchains (G)
bio (G) fpga (*,G) numlib (G) tools (G)
chem (G) lang (G) pc2fs (L) vis (G)
compilers (G) lib (G) slurm/21.08.6 (L)

Where:
*: built for host, native FPGA and offload to FPGA
G: Gateway Module
L: Module is loaded

Additional ways to search for software:

Loading for example the gateway module chem changes the Lmod search path and you will see now all available software packages from the category chem:

[n2login6 ~]$ ml ov

----------- Chemistry, Computational Chemistry and Quantum Chemistry -----------
CP2K (1) QuantumESPRESSO (2) gaussian/g16 (2) turbomole (2)
LAMMPS (1) ams (1) kim-api (1) xtb (1)
Libint (2) gaussian/g03 (1) libxc (3) yaff (1)
PLUMED (2) gaussian/g09 (2) orca (1)

-------------------------- Gateway- and basic modules --------------------------
DefaultModules (1) compilers (1) lang (1) numlib (1) toolchains (1)
all (1) data (1) lib (1) pc2fs (1) tools (1)
bio (1) devel (1) math (1) slurm (1) vis (1)
chem (1) fpga (1) mpi (1) system (1)

Central Spider Cache

We provide a central spider cache which is updated each 5 minutes to accelerate the speed of module avail and module spider

Searching Modules

We provide a script to ease searching of modules.

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