IMPROVE Singularity Containers

Each curated community model is deployed in a Singularity container that is extended to support standardized execution of all currated community models. This repository contains build recipies (definintion files) and tools for building model specific singularity (apptainer) images. To get started please use our guides in the documentation.

1. Setting up repository
2. Building and deploying container images
3. Running a container
4. Best practices for build recipies

Setup

1. Clone the repository into a location of your choice:

git clone https://github.com/JDACS4C-IMPROVE/Singularity.git

2. Create your config file:

cd Singularity
./setup

3. To customize your setup modify the config in config/improve.env to change the workspace and data directory.

Build and Deploy model images

From within the Singularity repo call:

1. make
2. make deploy

This will build and test the container and deploy them into ./images . If you want to deploy the images at a different location invoke the make command and set PREFIX to a path of your choosing, default is the current directory. The deploy process will create an image directory at the specified location and copy the image files into it.

make deploy PREFIX=/my/deploy/path/

Running an IMPROVE Container

Every container has a standardized scriptfor training the model called train.sh and a standard location (/candle_data_dir) for model input and output. train.sh expects /candle_data_dir To train a model you have to make your data directory available inside the container as /candle_data_dir.

singularity exec --nv --bind ${IMPROVE_DATA_DIR}:/candle_data_dir ${CONTAINER} train.sh ${GPUID} 

With:

• IMPROVE_DATA_DIR path to data directory
• CONTAINER path/and/name of image file
• GPUID

Singularity options:

• --nv enable Nvidia support
• --bind make the directory available inside container

For more examples see the documentation

Best Practices for Build Recipes

see: (https://sylabs.io/guides/3.7/user-guide/definition_files.html)

When crafting your recipe, it is best to consider the following:

• Always install packages, programs, data, and files into operating system locations (e.g. not /home, /tmp , or any other directories that might get commonly binded on).
• Clearly define install location prior installing. Don't make any assumptions, e.g. create and change into a build or install dir prior checking out github repos.
• Document your container. If your runscript doesn’t supply help, write a %help or %apphelp section. A good container tells the user how to interact with it.
• If you require any special environment variables to be defined, add them to the %environment and %appenv sections of the build recipe.
• Files should always be owned by a system account (UID less than 500).
• Ensure that sensitive files like /etc/passwd, /etc/group, and /etc/shadow do not contain secrets.
• Build production containers from a definition file instead of a sandbox that has been manually changed. This ensures greatest possibility of reproducibility and mitigates the “black box” effect.

Basic commands

Create a singularity container from a def file. In the first case, an image is created. In the second example, a writable container is created. In the third example, an image is created from a writable container.

For working with sanboxes make sure that your sanbox directory is not on a shared volumne.

# Here we use as a pseudo standard the tmp directory for writable containers.
# IMPROVE environment variables begin with I

export WORKDIR=/tmp
export ISL=${WORKDIR}/sandboxes
export IIL=${WORKDIR}/images

singularity build --sandbox ${ISL}/${SANDBOX} $DEFILE
singularity build ${SANDBOX}.sif ${ISL}/${SANDBOX}
singularity build ${IMAGE}.sif $DEFFILE