Since you are reading this from the SingularityCE source code, it will be assumed that you are building/compiling from source.
For full instructions on installation, including building RPMs, please check the installation section of the admin guide.
You must first install development tools and libraries to your host.
# Ensure repositories are up-to-date
sudo apt-get update
# Install debian packages for dependencies
sudo apt-get install -y \
autoconf \
automake \
cryptsetup \
fuse2fs \
git \
fuse \
libfuse-dev \
libglib2.0-dev \
libseccomp-dev \
libtool \
pkg-config \
runc \
squashfs-tools \
squashfs-tools-ng \
uidmap \
wget \
zlib1g-dev
# Install basic tools for compiling
sudo yum groupinstall -y 'Development Tools'
# Install RPM packages for dependencies
sudo yum install -y \
autoconf \
automake \
crun \
cryptsetup \
fuse \
fuse3 \
fuse3-devel \
git \
glib2-devel \
libseccomp-devel \
libtool \
squashfs-tools \
wget \
zlib-devel
sudo zypper in \
autoconf \
automake \
cryptsetup \
fuse2fs \
fuse3 \
fuse3-devel \
gcc \
gcc-c++ \
git \
glib2-devel \
libseccomp-devel \
libtool \
make \
pkg-config \
runc \
squashfs \
wget \
zlib-devel
If you intend to use the --oci
execution mode of SingularityCE, your system
must provide either:
squashfs-tools / squashfs
>= 4.5, which provides thesqfstar
utility. Older versions packaged by many distributions do not includesqfstar
.squashfs-tools-ng
, which provides thetar2sqfs
utility. This is not packaged by all distributions.
On Debian/Ubuntu squashfs-tools-ng
is available in the distribution
repositories. It has been included in the "Install system dependencies" step
above. No further action is necessary.
On Fedora, the squashfs-tools
package includes sqfstar
. No further action is
necessary.
On RHEL and derivatives, the squashfs-tools-ng
package is now
available in the EPEL repositories.
If you previously used the dctrud/squashfs-tools-ng
COPR, you should
disable it:
sudo dnf copr remove dctrud/squashfs-tools-ng
Follow the EPEL Quickstart
for you distribution to enable the EPEL repository. Install squashfs-tools-ng
with
dnf
or yum
.
sudo dnf install squashfs-tools-ng
On SLES/openSUSE, follow the instructions at the filesystems
project
to obtain an more recent squashfs
package that provides sqfstar
.
Singularity is written in Go, and may require a newer version of Go than is available in the repositories of your distribution. We recommend installing the latest version of Go from the official binaries.
First, download the Go tar.gz archive to /tmp
, then extract the archive to
/usr/local
.
NOTE: if you are updating Go from a older version, make sure you remove
/usr/local/go
before reinstalling it.
export VERSION=1.23.4 OS=linux ARCH=amd64 # change this as you need
wget -O /tmp/go${VERSION}.${OS}-${ARCH}.tar.gz \
https://dl.google.com/go/go${VERSION}.${OS}-${ARCH}.tar.gz
sudo tar -C /usr/local -xzf /tmp/go${VERSION}.${OS}-${ARCH}.tar.gz
Finally, add /usr/local/go/bin
to the PATH
environment variable:
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/go/bin' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
If you will be making changes to the source code, and submitting PRs, you should
install golangci-lint
, which is the linting tool used in the SingularityCE
project to ensure code consistency.
Every pull request must pass the golangci-lint
checks, and these will be run
automatically before attempting to merge the code. If you are modifying
Singularity and contributing your changes to the repository, it's faster to run
these checks locally before uploading your pull request.
In order to download and install the latest version of golangci-lint
, you can
run:
curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/golangci/golangci-lint/master/install.sh | sh -s -- -b $(go env GOPATH)/bin
Add $(go env GOPATH)
to the PATH
environment variable:
echo 'export PATH=$PATH:$(go env GOPATH)/bin' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
With the adoption of Go modules you no longer need to clone the SingularityCE repository to a specific location.
Clone the repository with git
in a location of your choice:
git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/sylabs/singularity.git
cd singularity
By default your clone will be on the main
branch which is where development
of SingularityCE happens. To build a specific version of SingularityCE, check
out a release tag before
compiling. E.g. to build the 4.2.2 release, checkout the
v4.2.2
tag:
git checkout --recurse-submodules v4.2.2
You can configure, build, and install SingularityCE using the following commands:
./mconfig
make -C builddir
sudo make -C builddir install
And that's it! Now you can check your SingularityCE version by running:
singularity --version
The mconfig
command accepts options that can modify the build and installation
of SingularityCE. For example, to build in a different folder and to set the
install prefix to a different path:
./mconfig -b ./buildtree -p /usr/local
See the output of ./mconfig -h
for available options.
Beginning with the 24.04 LTS release, Ubuntu does not permit applications to create unprivileged user namespaces by default.
If you install SingularityCE from a GitHub release .deb
package then an
apparmor profile will be installed that permits SingularityCE to create
unprivileged user namespaces.
If you install SingularityCE from source you must configure apparmor.
Create an apparmor profile file at /etc/apparmor.d/singularity-ce
:
sudo tee /etc/apparmor.d/singularity-ce << 'EOF'
# Permit unprivileged user namespace creation for SingularityCE starter
abi <abi/4.0>,
include <tunables/global>
profile singularity-ce /usr/local/libexec/singularity/bin/starter{,-suid} flags=(unconfined) {
userns,
# Site-specific additions and overrides. See local/README for details.
include if exists <local/singularity-ce>
}
EOF
Modify the path beginning /usr/local
if you specified a non-default --prefix
when configuring and installing SingularityCE.
Reload the system apparmor profiles after you have created the file:
sudo systemctl reload apparmor
SingularityCE will now be able to create unprivileged user namespaces on your system.
On a RHEL / AlmaLinux / Rocky Linux / Fedora machine you can build a
SingularityCE into an RPM package, and install it from the RPM. This is useful
if you need to install Singularity across multiple machines, or wish to manage
all software via yum/dnf
.
To build the RPM, you first need to install the
system dependencies and
Go toolchain as shown above. The RPM spec does not declare Go as
a build dependency, as SingularityCE may require a newer version of Go than is
available in distribution / EPEL repositories. Go should be installed manually,
so that the go executable is on $PATH
in the build environment.
Download the latest release tarball and use it to build and install the RPM like this:
export VERSION=4.2.2 # this is the singularity version, change as you need
# Fetch the source
wget https://github.com/sylabs/singularity/releases/download/v${VERSION}/singularity-ce-${VERSION}.tar.gz
# Build the rpm from the source tar.gz
rpmbuild -tb singularity-ce-${VERSION}.tar.gz
# Install SingularityCE using the resulting rpm
sudo rpm -ivh ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/singularity-ce-${VERSION}-1.el7.x86_64.rpm
# (Optionally) Remove the build tree and source to save space
rm -rf ~/rpmbuild singularity-ce-${VERSION}*.tar.gz
Alternatively, to build an RPM from the latest main you can
clone the repo as detailed above. Then use the rpm
make
target to build SingularityCE as an rpm package:
./mconfig
make -C builddir rpm
sudo rpm -ivh ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/singularity-ce-${VERSION}*.x86_64.rpm
By default, the rpm will be built so that SingularityCE is installed under
/usr/local
.
To build an rpm with an alternative install prefix set RPMPREFIX on the make step, for example:
make -C builddir rpm RPMPREFIX=/opt/singularity-ce
For more information on installing/updating/uninstalling the RPM, check out our admin docs.