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Using EIC Fun4All software with an Ubuntu Virtual Box

Singularity container for Fun4All for the EIC allow collaborators to run the EIC RCF/SDCC environment with the nightly builds on your local computers or on external high-performance computing clusters. It is optimized for offsite computing on Linux-based systems.

On Windows or MacOS PC/laptop though, it could be tricky to run Singularity directly on the host system. Therefore, this page provide a solution to run EIC Singularity container under an Linux Ubuntu virtual box, which can run well on Windows or MacOS.

  1. Install VirtualBox on your host system: Virtual Box

  2. Download EIC Ubuntu 18.04LTS Image. The MD5SUM is f6dc1258689504d6c928efc3b77a66c2.

This image has CVMFS and Singularity3 preinstalled, enabling direct loading all EIC Fun4All builds via the OpenScienceGrid network (i.e. Option-1 of main documentation).

  1. Import the above image to your virtual box (HowTs). Please ensure you have internet connection before the next step (e.g. visit www.bnl.gov from inside the VirtualBox)

Then you are good to go. Start the imported Virtual Box. The Ubuntu VM is set to do unattended-upgrades. On the first start it will pull in and install a lot of package updates. The default user is fun4all with password of fun4all. It would be good practice to change at least the password after first login.

Following files should be installed in the home folder:

cp  /cvmfs/eic.opensciencegrid.org/singularity/fun4all_scripts/ecce/singularity_shell.sh ~/
cp /cvmfs/eic.opensciencegrid.org/singularity/fun4all_scripts/ecce/setup.sh ~/

Then we have:

  • ~/singularity_shell.sh: execute this script to get a bash shell with the Singularity container.
  • ~/setup.sh: source this macro from inside the Singularity container to use the lastest build
  • ~/install/: local build folder to be used for $MYINSTALL area, which is currently empty

Plesae note the first use of CVMFS may be slow as it synchronizes online

Start using it with an Ubuntu terminal:

fun4all@Fun4AllSingularity:~$ ./singularity_shell.sh
entering the Fun4All singularity container on /cvmfs/eic.opensciencegrid.org


Singularity> source setup.sh 
.....
Using the Fun4All build at /cvmfs/eic.opensciencegrid.org/gcc-8.3/release/release_new/new.3 (the build version number may be different, it is 1-4)
Local build will be installed at /home/fun4all/install

Singularity> git clone https://github.com/ecce-eic/macros.git
Cloning into 'macros'...
...

Singularity> cd macros/detectors/EICDetector
Singularity> root Fun4All_G4_EICDetector.C
   ------------------------------------------------------------
  | Welcome to ROOT 6.22/02                  https://root.cern |
...

Then you are welcome to follow the default macro tutorials: https://github.com/ecce-eic/macros

Please note the first use of a day will be slow, as CVMFS caches files from BNL SDCC over the network. You are also welcome use Option-2 downloading a build and run the software without internet. In this case you have to start the singularity container via

singularity shell -B cvmfs:/cvmfs cvmfs/eic.opensciencegrid.org/singularity/rhic_sl7_ext

Screenshot with Fun4All_G4_EICDetector.C

Troubleshooting

If you are having display issues then you can tell virtualbox to use a different graphics support by going to Settings->Display->Graphics Controller and selecting VboxVGA (You can also disable 3D acceleration here)

Changing Graphics Support