While working on the HPC cluster the user may need some specific programs that are not installed by default. Many of them can be installed via environment modules.
To check the available modules, the command to be issued is
-bash-4.2$ module avail ------------------------ /usr/share/Modules/modulefiles ------------------------ dot module-git module-info modules null use.own ------------------------------- /etc/modulefiles ------------------------------- mpi/mpich-3.0-x86_64 mpi/mpich-x86_64 mpi/openmpi-x86_64 ------------------------ /shared/software/modulefiles/ ------------------------- boost_1_56_0_gcc4_9_0 boost_1_61_0_gcc4_9_0_with_python boost_1_64_0_gcc7_1_0 boost_1_77_0_gcc8 boost_1_77_0_gcc9_2_0 compilers/cuda-10.0 compilers/cuda-10.1 compilers/cuda-11.2 compilers/cuda-6.0 compilers/cuda-6.5 compilers/cuda-7.0 [...]
The user can load one of the available modules with the command
-bash-4.2$ module load <module_name>
A list of the loaded modules can be retrieved with the following command
-bash-4.2$ module list Currently Loaded Modulefiles: 1) mpi/openmpi-x86_64 2) /compilers/python-3.10.5
In this example two modules have been loaded (openmpi and python-3.10.5).
When the user does not need a module anymore, it can be unloaded:
-bash-4.2$ module unload <module_name>