Modules Software Environment Manager on Quest

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Quest RHEL8 Pilot Environment

The RHEL8 Pilot Environment is available for use now.

Starting Tuesday, December 10, seventy of the latest Intel Emerald Rapids CPU nodes (128 cores and 512GB of RAM) will be available to the RHEL8 Pilot, significantly increasing the compute capacity of this environment. With this expansion, the pilot environment will consist of twenty-four NVIDIA H100 GPU nodes (totaling ninety-six H100 cards) and 140 CPU nodes totaling 12,600 cores. Quest users are encouraged to test their workflows in RHEL8 Pilot environment to prepare for Quest moving completely to RHEL8 in March 2025. Detailed instructions are available on how to submit jobs for the new Operating System in the Knowledge Base article, RHEL8 Pilot Environment.

How to load and manage environment modules on Quest to access software.

Quest uses Environment Modules to give users access to the software installed on Quest.

Modules are used to manage:

  • multiple versions of applications, tools and libraries
  • software where complex changes to the environment are necessary
  • software where name conflicts with other software would cause problems

Loading a module for a particular piece of software often adds the path to the executable to $PATH, the path to the library to $LD_LIBRARY_PATH, and so on. Loading a module, then, relieves the user of having to remember or look up and type long path names.

Looking for information on how to load specific applications or software on Quest through the module system? Please see our the list of available software and applications on Quest for further details.

Available Modules

Use the command

module avail

to list all modules available on Quest.

A listing of key software packages can also be found on the Quest Software page.

Loading a Module

To access almost every software application on Quest, you must first load the appropriate module:

module load <modulename>

Then you can reference software commands by name.

Module Versions

There are multiple versions of many software programs on Quest. Modules are named with the format softwarename/version. For example, if you look at the modules available for Python, you'll see several versions:

module avail python

---------------------------------------- /software/Modules/3.2.9/modulefiles -----------------------------------------
python/2.7.13            python/ActivePython-3.2  python/anaconda(default) python/anaconda3.6
python/ActivePython-2.7  python/Canopy            python/anaconda3         python/epd-7.3-2

(default) indicates which module will be loaded if you don't specify the version (e.g. module load python). Defaults can change over time, however, so it is strongly recommended that you always specify the module version even if you are using the default version. For example,

module load python-anaconda3

Useful Module Commands

Command Action
module avail Shows the available software packages
module avail <search> Shows all modules that have <search> in the main part of the name (not in the version, which comes after the /). <search> is case sensitive. This is useful for viewing the versions available for a particular program instead of having to sort through the long list of all modules.
module -r spider '^p'
module -r spider mpi
module -r spider 'mpi$
Finds all the modules that start with `p' or `P'
Finds all modules that have "mpi" in their name.
Finds all modules that end with "mpi" in their name.
module list Shows which modules are currently loaded
module load <module> Loads a software package’s path information into your local environment so your session can find the software to run it
module purge <module> Takes the software package’s information out of your local environment; this is generally more reliable than module unload
module purge all Unloads all of the module packages currently in your local environment
module display <foo> Displays the changes that are made to the environment by loading module <foo> without actually loading it