Flight User Suite

What is Flight User Suite?

The Flight User Suite is a collection of environment tools that provide users with easy and intuitive ways to manage the software and desktop sessions in a research environment. The purpose of these tools is to get researchers started with HPC as quickly as possible without needing to worry about their environment, leaving them to do what they do best - research!

The tools are non-intrusive to the research environment, defaulting to a “deactivated” state. Leaving admins and users free to configure and utilise their systems how they want.

Flight User Suite is made up of the following tools:

  • Runway: Flight Runway provides a self-contained Ruby environment and an entrypoint for accessing the other flight tools
  • Env: Flight Env provides access to, and management of, various software managers to ensure access to a wide variety of HPC applications
  • Desktop: Flight Desktop provides an intuitive tool for launching VNC-ready virtual desktops of many different desktop environments (gnome, xterm, kde, etc)
  • Starter: Flight Starter provides profile scripts for integrating the user suite into the shell environment

Installing Flight User Suite

The OpenFlight project packages tools as both RPMs and debs that are hosted in package repositories which can be quickly installed with a couple of commands.

Adding the OpenFlight Package Repositories

CentOS 7
CentOS 8
Ubuntu 18.04
Ubuntu 20.04

  • Install the OpenFlight release RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo yum install https://repo.openflighthpc.org/pub/centos/7/openflighthpc-release-latest.noarch.rpm

  • Rebuild the yum cache:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo yum makecache

Note

Some tools require packages available in the EPEL repository, this can be installed with yum install epel-release

  • Install the OpenFlight release RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo dnf install https://repo.openflighthpc.org/openflight/centos/8/x86_64/openflighthpc-release-3-1.noarch.rpm

  • Rebuild the yum cache:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo dnf makecache

Note

Some tools require packages available in the EPEL repository, this can be installed with yum install epel-release. Additionally the PowerTools repository is needed, this can be enabled with yum config-manager --set-enabled PowerTools

  • Import the public signature for OpenFlight:

    flight@gateway1:~$ sudo apt-key adv --fetch-keys https://repo.openflighthpc.org/openflighthpc-archive-key.asc

  • Install the OpenFlight repository:

    flight@gateway1:~$ sudo apt-add-repository "deb https://repo.openflighthpc.org/openflight/ubuntu stable main"

  • Update the apt cache:

    flight@gateway1:~$ sudo apt-get update

  • Import the public signature for OpenFlight:

    flight@gateway1:~$ sudo apt-key adv --fetch-keys https://repo.openflighthpc.org/openflighthpc-archive-key.asc

  • Install the OpenFlight repository:

    flight@gateway1:~$ sudo apt-add-repository "deb https://repo.openflighthpc.org/openflight/ubuntu stable main"

  • Update the apt cache:

    flight@gateway1:~$ sudo apt-get update

Now the OpenFlight repositories are installed. There are 3 repositories available - production (enabled by default), dev (providing development releases of tools) and vault (access to old, unsupported versions and retired tools).

Installation Method 1: Quick

The quickest and simplest way to get up and running with the user suite is to simply install the group package for the tools. This will ensure that compatible versions of all the tools are installed.

CentOS 7
CentOS 8
Ubuntu 18.04
Ubuntu 20.04

  • Install the user suite RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo yum install flight-user-suite

  • Install the user suite RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo dnf install flight-user-suite

  • Install the user suite deb:

    flight@gateway1:~$ sudo apt-get install flight-user-suite

  • Install the user suite deb:

    flight@gateway1:~$ sudo apt-get install flight-user-suite

Note

After installation, either reboot your system or logout and back in again to expose the flight command to the shell

Installation Method 2: Slightly Less Quick

Each tool in the user suite is also available through the repositories and can be installed one at a time.

CentOS 7
CentOS 8
Ubuntu 18.04
Ubuntu 20.04

  • Install the Flight Runway RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo yum install flight-runway

  • Install Flight Env RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo yum install flight-env

  • Install Flight Desktop RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo yum install flight-desktop

  • Install Flight Starter RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo yum install flight-starter

  • Install the Flight Runway RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo dnf install flight-runway

  • Install Flight Env RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo dnf install flight-env

  • Install Flight Desktop RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo dnf install flight-desktop

  • Install Flight Starter RPM:

    [flight@gateway1 ~]$ sudo dnf install flight-starter

  • Install Flight Runway deb:

    flight@gatewat1:~$ sudo apt-get install flight-runway

  • Install Flight Env deb:

    flight@gatewat1:~$ sudo apt-get install flight-env

  • Install Flight Desktop deb:

    flight@gatewat1:~$ sudo apt-get install flight-desktop

  • Install Flight Starter deb:

    flight@gatewat1:~$ sudo apt-get install flight-starter

  • Install Flight Runway deb:

    flight@gatewat1:~$ sudo apt-get install flight-runway

  • Install Flight Env deb:

    flight@gatewat1:~$ sudo apt-get install flight-env

  • Install Flight Desktop deb:

    flight@gatewat1:~$ sudo apt-get install flight-desktop

  • Install Flight Starter deb:

    flight@gatewat1:~$ sudo apt-get install flight-starter

Note

After installation, either reboot your system or logout and back in again to expose the flight command to the shell

Installation Method 3: Manual

For those who wish to have more control over their installation, all of the Flight User Suite tools have manual installation instructions in the READMEs on GitHub.