Created: Aug 18, 2023

Edited: Aug 18, 2023

Introduction

Recently, I communicated with CU Research Computing Support team about using GrADS software on Alpine (CURC's latest cluster). The installation was not straightforward as some of the required packages were not compatible with Alpine's compiler. They kindly built the whole environment with necessary packages and dependencies using a container and made it available to all Alpine users. The following is a step-by-step guide to GrADS on Alpine that I created based on the brief guidance by the RC Support Team.

What is GrADS?

GrADS (Grid Analysis and Display System) is an interactive software that is often used for visualizing data in Earth science. For further information, visit the GrADS website.

Run GrADS on Alpine

Note: The following procedures are tested only on Mac. Running these commands on other environments may not work.

The necessary packages and dependencies are installed as a container on Alpine. You can, however, build your own container in your workspace.

• Open here for instructions on building the container (not needed for most Alpine users unless you need to build your own container)

1. Start the session with X forwarding.

   ssh -X <username>@login.rc.colorado.edu
   

2. Get on an interactive compute node using sinteractive (it seems that using acompile will cause issues).

   sinteractive --partition=atesting --qos=testing # these flags are optional
   

3. Move to your working directory.

   It would be sufficient to move to the top directory such as your projects or scratch workspace.

4. Run the pre-built container.

   apptainer run --bind $PWD /curc/sw/containers/examples/grads/grads_2.2.sif
   

   In this case, you are binding the current directory. This way all the directories below this one will be visible in the container. You can change $PWD to whichever directory you would like. Your home directory will also be bound automatically. If you built the container yourself, point to the correct sif file.

   If the container started properly, the prompt changes to Singularity >.

5. Add an environment variable GAUDPT and point it to the udpt file.

   export GAUDPT=/curc/sw/containers/examples/grads/udpt
   

   Also, you can add this variable to your .bashrc file so that it will be loaded automatically when the container starts.

6. Run GrADS using X11.

   grads -d X11 -h GD
   

   By default, running just grads will use Cairo package which currently seems to be buggy. You can run GrADS using X11 instead.

7. Voilà! A window opens up and you can enter a series of GrADS commands to interact with data. Enjoy visualizing data!