ESMValTool v2 on Mistral

Most of this document is bases on the instructions in the official documentation.

Prepared for the MPI-M LunchBytes seminar on Nov 18 by Sebastian Milinski sebastian.milinski@mpimet.mpg.de.

The easiest way to install ESMValTool on Mistral is using Anaconda. It makes sense to move the environments to a different location than the home directory because each environment may use 4-5GB.

First, load the anaconda module:

module load anaconda3/bleeding_edge

To change the default environment directory, edit the ~/.condarc file:

envs_dirs:
  - /work/your_project/m123456/conda-envs

To create a new environment and install ESMValTool in it, run:

conda create --name esmvaltool_fixed -c esmvalgroup -c conda-forge julia esmvalcore==2.0.0b1 esmvaltool==2.0.0b1

Anaconda will print a list of packages that will be installed. Confirm with enter and get a coffee… (this can take a while).

Some useful commands for working with Anaconda can be found in the conda cheat sheet.

A config file with some adjustments for Mistral can be copied from here:

/home/mpim/m300265/scripts/lunchbytes/esmvaltool/config-user-lunchbytes.yml

A very simple example can be copied from here:

/home/mpim/m300265/scripts/lunchbytes/esmvaltool/examples/recipe_python.yml

In the config-user-lunchbytes.yml, all output will go into the directory ./esmvaltool_output in your current working directory. You might want to change your directory before the next command.

Before running ESMValTool, make sure that the Conda environment that you created before is activated:

source activate esmvaltool

Finally, to run this example, type:

esmvaltool -c config-user-lunchbytes.yml recipe_python.yml

When you are done with the ESMValTool runs and want to deactivate the Conda environment to return to your normal software tree or a different Conda environment, type:

source deactivate