[Hallc] JLab computing transition to Alma Linux 9

[Ole Hansen]

Hello everyone.

As many of you are surely aware, the central JLab Linux computer systems 
are in the process of being upgraded to Alma Linux 9. This transition is 
expected to be complete by the end of June.

The Hall A and Hall C simulation and analysis software has been tested 
on this new Linux platform and, as far as we can tell at the moment, 
builds and runs without any particular issues. However, most software 
(basically anything using shared libraries) will need to be recompiled. 
You generally cannot use the same executables on the old RHEL7/CentOS 7 
and the new Alma 9 systems. This also applies to compiled ROOT scripts. 
You need to compile separate versions for each of the two platforms.

As many of you know, we are providing precompiled software under 
/group/halla/apps. Much of this software has been built for both RHEL7 
and Alma9 and can be loaded with the "module" command on either 
platform. Specifically, the following modules support Alma9 at this time:

analyzer/1.7.12
analyzer/1.7.8
boost/1.84
CLHEP/2.4.6.4
evio/5.3
Geant4/11.1.2
Geant4/11.2.1
hcana/1.1
Pythia/6.4.28
Pythia/8.311
python/2.7.18
Qt/5.15.10
Qt/5.15.13
ROOT/6.26-10
ROOT/6.30-04
xerces-c/3.2.4
group.apps

Important: Any packages not listed above do not currently work on Alma9 
and should not be loaded on Alma9. Otherwise, your code may experience 
obscure runtime errors. In particular, please do not attempt to load any 
gcc module. If you try to do so,  you should get an error from the 
module command.

For reference, here is an example of how to set up the Hall C analyzer 
on the central systems:

% module purge
% module use /group/halla/modulefiles
% module load hcana
Loading hcana/1.1
   Loading requirement: pythia6/6.4.28 pythia8/8.311 root/6.30.04 
evio/5.3 analyzer/1.7.12

(The pythia requirements appear because ROOT/6.30.04 was compiled with 
pythia support.)

Any hcana plugin libraries that you have compiled yourself will have to 
be recompiled still, even if you load hcana from /group/halla/apps.

We will be keeping the non-Alma9 packages around for now so that old 
code will continue to run on not-yet-converted CentOS 7 farm nodes. 
Beginning in July, the old packages will be removed.

Please let us know if you'd like additional packages installed under 
/group/halla for Alma9. Also, please report any errors you encounter.

Ole


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