Dardel tips

[mahesh-panchal]

In the .bashrc it would be handy to add:

# Set conda package location
export CONDA_PKGS_DIRS=$PDC_TMP/conda/pkgs
# Set Apptainer build path for temporarily pulling and converting images
export APPTAINER_CACHE=$PDC_TMP/apptainer/cache
export SINGULARITY_CACHE=$PDC_TMP/singularity/cache

PDC_TMP points to the scratch space on Dardel which has no quota and a 30 day limit before a file is deleted if not used.

Potentially useful conda information:

• https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/configuration/settings.html#pkgs-dirs-specify-package-directories
• https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/configuration/settings.html#configuring-number-of-threads
• https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/tasks/manage-environments.html#conda-init
  Disable base env activation, but allow conda to be used:

  auto_activate_base: false
  

• https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/tasks/manage-environments.html#create-explicit-lockfiles-without-creating-an-environment
• https://docs.conda.io/projects/conda/en/latest/user-guide/configuration/settings.html#allowlist-channels-and-denylist-channels-allow-or-deny-specific-channels

[fasterius]

Thanks a lot for this! Will go through and see what we might add.

[johnne]

We can start by adding a callout about setting $CONDA_PKGS_DIRS on clusters, maybe just next to the callout about using -p to place the environment in a location outside of your home directory.