Modules

Access to software is controlled by modules which configure your environment to use specific applications. HPC uses this method for controlling access to applications, tools and libraries, allowing you to select software options and setup the relevant environment variables. There are a few simple commands which allow you to retrieve information about the software installed (modules) on HPC.

To view a list of all available modules

module avail

Note this is split into the following sections :

  • general
  • compilers
  • libraries
  • mth
  • sys
  • che
  • env
  • bio-med

[s154@lgn02 ~]$ module avail    

------ /gpfs/software/modules/general -----------
ImageMagick/6.9.2-4    binutils/2.25      ghostscript/9.18    pandoc/2.2.3.2
R/3.0.1/gcc      bison/2.3       git/1.8.3.1       parallel/20180122/gcc
R/3.0.2/gcc     byacc/20170709         gnuplot/5.0.1          perl/5.24.1/gcc
R/3.2.3/gcc     container/matlab/R2018 htk/3.4.1   

The list is long and you may need to scroll up to see the section relevant to you.  If you can't see the one you need, check the other sections before contacting us.

To load a module

module add <modulename> or module load <modulename> to add the module

To swap to a different module

module switch <modulename1> <modulename2>  or module swap <modulename1> <modulename2> 

To unload a module

module rm <modulename> or module unload <modulename> or  module del <modulename> to remove the module

To remove all modules

module purge

To show the modules you have loaded

module list

s154@lgn02 ~]$ module list
Currently Loaded Modulefiles:
  1) intel/2017         2) samtools/1.5/gcc

To list the contents of a module file

module display <modulename> or module show <modulename>

[s154@lgn02 ~]$ module show intel/2015
-------------------------------------------------------------------
/gpfs/software/modules/compilers/intel/2015:

module-whatis Intel Parallel Studio XE 2015.3 compiler - recommended -xSSE4.2 -axAVX,CORE-AVX2,CORE-AVX-I
prepend-path  PATH /gpfs/software/compilers/intel/psxe2015.3//bin
prepend-path  PATH /gpfs/software/compilers/intel/psxe2015.3//composer_xe_2015.3.187/bin/
prepend-path  MANPATH /gpfs/software/compilers/intel/psxe2015.3
prepend-path  LD_LIBRARY_PATH /gpfs/software/compilers/intel/psxe2015.3/lib/intel64
prepend-path LIBRARY_PATH /gpfs/software/compilers/intel/psxe2015.3/lib/intel64
setenv CC icc
setenv  FC ifort
setenv  F77 ifort
setenv  CXX icpc
setenv INTEL_LICENSE_FILE /gpfs/software/compilers/intel/psxe2015.3/network.lic

This command is useful if you need to know the path for setting environment variables.Particularly useful in finding library paths for the purpose of linking against libraries. Library paths are comma delimited directories that are assigned to the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH