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Philip Maechling edited this page Dec 10, 2021 · 24 revisions

The scripts in this repo are used to build docker images from the bbp distribution.

Motivation for Creating a BBP Docker Image

We are using Docker to help distribute our scientific software. Users that retrieve SCEC software from Dockerhub can install and run it on a wide variety of computers and operating systems. SCEC software is designed for use on Linux computer environments, becauses most academic HPC clusters are Linux-based systems. The Docker version of BBP will run on Linux, but also on Mac and Windows computers.

Preparing to Run BBP Docker

Here we describe a typical installation for BBP Docker. Assume the user has a Mac computer and they want to run BBP. The user should install Docker on their Computer. The user should create a Dockerhub account. The User should select a directory on their Mac, where they want the BBP simulation results to be saved. We will call this the "bbp home" directory. Within the home directory, the user creates a subdirectory, called "target". As an example, on my Mac, my bbp home directory is /Users/maechlin/bbp_docker, and my bbp data directory is /Users/maechlin/bbp_docker/target.

A key issue is how files are shared between the Docker image, and the users computer. Files are shared in the "target" directory mentioned above. Look at the run_bbp.sh script in this repo to see how to invoke BBP and how to mount the right directories.

Once the BBP docker image is available from Dockerhub, users run the image from a terminal window on their computer. The Docker daemon must be running. When the user issues the docker run command, the image starts and creates a container. When the container is running, the terminal windown changes. It shows the users logged into a centos linux computer, as user bbp, in a directory /app/target.

The files in the /app/target are the same files in their local computer at /Users/maechlin/bbp_docker/target directory.

BBP Developers can use these instructions to build a new BBP Docker image. [1] How to Build a BBP Docker Image

BBP Users can use these instructions to run the BBP Docker image that they retrieve from Dockerhub. [2] How to Run a BBP Docker Image

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