HDF5 on AutonLab resources

[Predrag Punosevac]

George Stoica <gis at andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:

> Hi Predrag,
> 
> I hope everything is well.
> 
> I was wondering whether there might be an existing HDF5 installation path
> on the autonlab resources? I have been trying to install caffe, and the

HDF5 had some nasty dependency issues. Package management is NP hard
problem so that is expected from time to time on the large projects like
RHEL. I removed it from our computing nodes as nobody needed it. I would
be happy to install HDF5 if you tell me exactly what packages. It is
actually very good and very useful data format. I like it a lot.
I would install it on one of machines running RHEL 8.2. Eventually all
computing nodes will run 8.xxx branch so there is no point looking back.


> respective Makefile cannot find any HDF5 distribution. I have tried
> installing the latest distribution myself but it seems like there may be a
> roadblock with sudo privileges (at least based on the sources I have
> found).
> 

We use adhere to "The Principle of Least Privilege" around the Auton Lab
as documented on our Wiki. No you nor for that matter most people with
the lab accounts can't execute any commands which require elevated
privileges.  


> Or do you know if there might be an existing caffe installation that may be
> used? I ask this because there were other dependency issues such as a too

People did use Caffe in the past on our servers.


> old version of BOOST (the server default is 1.53,whereas the MakeFile
> expects at least 1.54). While I believe I've gotten past these problems, I


There are multiple version of Boost C++ library installed on RHEL 7.8.
RHEL 8.2 comes with quite new C++ compiler and Boost libraries. Not many
people around the lab use C++ these days.  


> am not very familiar with solving these lower level dependency issues and
> am concerned about potentially inadvertently screwing something up on the
> server.

That is why you are not member of any sudoers group. The second rule in
the lab is if you break things you get to keep all the pieces and you
have to put them back together. Can you guess who broke the most things
around here:-) Hint: He is just typing the replay to your email. 


Cheers,
Predrag


> 
> Thanks very much,
> George