NEST Desktop Singularity

Official Singularity container of NEST Desktop, a container of NEST Simulator is also provided.

Since Singularity runs only on Linux systems, it works in Linux only.

For more information, please see the User Documentation Page of NEST Desktop as well as the User Documentation Page of NEST Simulator.

Preparation

Requirements

• Singularity 3.0 or higher

To install Singularity, please follow the official guide of Singularity page.

Installation

1. Clone a working copy from the repository:

git clone https://github.com/nest-desktop/nest-desktop-singularity
cd nest-desktop-singularity

2. Register the command nest-desktop-singularity:

export PATH=$PATH:$PWD/bin

ℹ️ Info

Please keep in mind, that these changes are only temporary. If you would like to keep these permanently, you need to add the command to your .profile configuration file. echo "export PATH=$PATH:$PWD/bin" >> ~/.profile After that, you need to relogin (or restart), so that the changes are adopted.

3a. Build the Singularity containers for NEST Desktop and NEST Simulator with sudo:

nest-desktop-singularity build

Then, it creates two image files (nest-desktop.sif and nest-simulator.sif) in the images subfolder.

3b. Alternative: you can use fakeroot to build containers.

Add your username to the Singularity fakeroot config.

sudo singularity config fakeroot --add $USER

Then you can build containers with fakeroot (without sudo) in the future (e.g. when a container received updates). If you have not removed the containers before, you will be asked for confirmation before these are overwritten (y to confirm, N to abort). This is not necessary directly after the installation! If you copied this command and executed it thoughtlessly, no worries: This is not harmful, it is only inefficient to rebuild the freshly built containers.

nest-desktop-singularity build -f

Usage

Start the instances of NEST Desktop and NEST Simulator:

nest-desktop-singularity start

Now, NEST Desktop is serving at localhost:8000
and NEST Simulator at localhost:5000.

Further methods

Get the status of both instances.

nest-desktop-singularity status

Stop both instances.

nest-desktop-singularity stop

Restart both instances.

nest-desktop-singularity restart

For more commands of Singularity, please consult the official documentation.

Execute a command for a single instance

Start a single container, e.g. NEST Desktop.

nest-desktop-singularity start nest-desktop

Restart a single container, e.g. NEST Simulator.

nest-desktop-singularity restart nest-simulator

License

Licensed under the MIT license.