1CHARLIECLOUD(7) Charliecloud CHARLIECLOUD(7)
2
6 charliecloud - Lightweight user-defined software stacks for high-per‐
7 formance computing
8
10 Charliecloud provides user-defined software stacks (UDSS) for high-per‐
11 formance computing (HPC) centers. This “bring your own software stack”
12 functionality addresses needs such as:
13 • software dependencies that are numerous, complex, unusual, differ‐
15 ently configured, or simply newer/older than what the center pro‐
16 vides;
17 • build-time requirements unavailable within the center, such as rela‐
19 tively unfettered internet access;
20 • validated software stacks and configuration to meet the standards of
22 a particular field of inquiry;
23 • portability of environments between resources, including workstations
25 and other test and development system not managed by the center;
26 • consistent environments, even archivally so, that can be easily, re‐
28 liably, and verifiably reproduced in the future; and/or
29 • usability and comprehensibility.
31
33 Charliecloud uses Linux user namespaces to run containers with no priv‐
34 ileged operations or daemons and minimal configuration changes on cen‐
35 ter resources. This simple approach avoids most security risks while
36 maintaining access to the performance and functionality already on of‐
37 fer.
38 Container images can be built using Docker or anything else that can
40 generate a standard Linux filesystem tree.
41
43 • Documentation: https://hpc.github.io/charliecloud
44 • GitHub repository: https://github.com/hpc/charliecloud
46 • Low-traffic mailing list for announcements:
48 https://groups.io/g/charliecloud
49 • We wrote an article for USENIX’s magazine ;login: that explains in
51 more detail the motivation for Charliecloud and the technology upon
52 which it is based:
53 https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/fall2017/priedhorsky
54 • A more technical resource is our Supercomputing 2017 paper:
56 https://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=3126925
57
59 Contributors:
60 • Richard Berger <rberger@lanl.gov>
62 • Lucas Caudill <lcaudill@lanl.gov>
64 • Rusty Davis <rustyd@lanl.gov>
66 • Hunter Easterday <heasterday@lanl.gov>
68 • Oliver Freyermuth <o.freyermuth@googlemail.com>
70 • Shane Goff <rgoff@lanl.gov>
72 • Michael Jennings <mej@lanl.gov>
74 • Christoph Junghans <junghans@lanl.gov>
76 • Dave Love <dave.love@manchester.ac.uk>
78 • Jordan Ogas <jogas@lanl.gov>
80 • Kevin Pelzel <kpelzel@lanl.gov>
82 • Megan Phinney <mphinney@lanl.gov>
84 • Reid Priedhorsky <reidpr@lanl.gov>, co-founder and project lead
86 • Tim Randles <trandles@lanl.gov>, co-founder
88 • Benjamin “The Storm” Stormer <bstormer@lanl.gov>
90 • Meisam Tabriz <meisam.tabriz@mpcdf.mpg.de>
92 • Matthew Vernon <mv3@sanger.ac.uk>
94 • Peter Wienemann <wienemann@physik.uni-bonn.de>
96 • Lowell Wofford <lowell@lanl.gov>
98
100 Use our GitHub page: https://github.com/hpc/charliecloud
101 Bug reports and feature requests should be filed as “Issues”. Ques‐
103 tions, comments, support requests, and everything else should use our
104 “Discussions”. Don’t worry if you put something in the wrong place;
105 we’ll be more than happy to help regardless.
106 We also have a mailing list for announcements:
108 https://groups.io/g/charliecloud
109 Patches are much appreciated on the software itself as well as documen‐
111 tation. Optionally, please include in your first patch a credit for
112 yourself in the list above.
113 We are friendly and welcoming of diversity on all dimensions.
115
117 If Charliecloud helped your research, or it was useful to you in any
118 other context where bibliographic citations are appropriate, please
119 cite the following open-access paper:
120 Reid Priedhorsky and Tim Randles. “Charliecloud: Unprivileged con‐
121 tainers for user-defined software stacks in HPC”, 2017. In Proc. Su‐
122 percomputing. DOI: 10.1145/3126908.3126925.
123 Note: This paper contains out-of-date number for the size of Char‐
125 liecloud’s code. Please instead use the current number in the FAQ.
126
128 Charliecloud is copyright © 2014–2022 Triad National Security, LLC and
129 others.
130 This software was produced under U.S. Government contract
132 89233218CNA000001 for Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), which is
133 operated by Triad National Security, LLC for the U.S. Department of En‐
134 ergy/National Nuclear Security Administration.
135 This is open source software (LA-CC 14-096); you can redistribute it
137 and/or modify it under the terms of the Apache License, Version 2.0. A
138 copy is included in file LICENSE. You may not use this software except
139 in compliance with the license.
140 The Government is granted for itself and others acting on its behalf a
142 nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable worldwide license in this material
143 to reproduce, prepare derivative works, distribute copies to the pub‐
144 lic, perform publicly and display publicly, and to permit others to do
145 so.
146 Neither the government nor Triad National Security, LLC makes any war‐
148 ranty, express or implied, or assumes any liability for use of this
149 software.
150 If software is modified to produce derivative works, such derivative
152 works should be clearly marked, so as not to confuse it with the ver‐
153 sion available from LANL.
154 Reporting bugs
156 If Charliecloud was obtained from your Linux distribution, use your
157 distribution’s bug reporting procedures.
158 Otherwise, report bugs to: https://github.com/hpc/charliecloud/issues
160
162 ch-checkns(1), ch-convert(1), ch-fromhost(1), ch-image(1), ch-run(1),
163 ch-run-oci(1), ch-ssh(1), ch-test(1),
164 Full documentation at: https://hpc.github.io/charliecloud
166
168 These man pages are for Charliecloud version 0.32 (Git commit 0.32).
169
171 2014–2022, Triad National Security, LLC and others
1720.32 2023-07-19 00:00 UTC CHARLIECLOUD(7)