Installation
Prerequisites
Before attempting to install AceCAST users should ensure they have access to a compatible system with NVIDIA GPUs (see System Requirements).
Contact and User Support
Please do not hesitate to contact support@tempoquest.com for any issues or questions that you may have during the installation process.
Download AceCAST
To download AceCAST, navigate to the Releases page and follow the download instructions for the newest release of AceCAST. Once the AceCAST tarball has been downloaded, unpack it using the tar command as follows.
[acecast-user@localhost]$ tar -xf AceCASTv1.3+linux.x86_64.tar.gz
Package Contents
Once unpacked you should see a new AceCAST directory with a file structure similar to this:
AceCAST
├── benchmarks
│ - a directory intended to hold AceCAST benchmark test
│ case data
├── README
├── run
│ ├── acecast-advisor.sh
│ │ - script intended to help users determine namelist
│ │ support and computational scaling extents
│ ├── acecast.exe
│ │ - AceCAST GPU-WRF executable -- this is the GPU
│ │ equivalent of wrf.exe
│ ├── CCN_ACTIVATE.BIN
│ ├── diffwrfs
│ │ - utility for comparing WRF/AceCAST input and
│ │ output files
│ ├── GENPARM.TBL
│ ├── gpu-launch.sh
│ │ - MPI wrapper script for assigning GPUs to each
│ │ MPI process
│ ├── LANDUSE.TBL
│ ├── ndown.exe
│ │ - precompiled ndown.exe executable (see WRF
│ │ documentation) -- runs on CPU
│ ├── ozone.formatted
│ ├── ozone_lat.formatted
│ ├── ozone_plev.formatted
│ ├── README.namelist
│ ├── real.exe
│ │ - precompiled real.exe executable -- runs on CPU
│ ├── RRTMG_LW_DATA
│ ├── RRTMG_SW_DATA
│ ├── SOILPARM.TBL
│ ├── VEGPARM.TBL
│ └── wrf_stats_ck
│ - utility script for getting basic performance
│ metrics of AceCAST/WRF runs
└── scripts
└── install_deps.sh
- script for installing the shared libraries
that are required to run the various
executables in this package
Many of these files should already look familiar to seasoned WRF users. We have added short annotations above describing files and directories that we believe are worth noting.
Acquire a License
AceCAST is a licensed software package and as such requires a valid license to run. A 60-day trial license can be acquired by registering at the TempoQuest Registration Page. After registering you should recieve an email containing your trial license. We suggest placing this file in the AceCAST/run directory. If your 60-day trial has ended please contact support@tempoquest.com to request an extension and/or a quote.
Running the Installation Script
To ensure compatibility with the precompiled executables in the AceCAST distribution it is highly recommend to use the dependency installation script to install the various compilers and shared libraries required at runtime (found at AceCAST/scripts/install_deps.sh). This script installs the following components:
NVIDIA 20.7 (formerly PGI) compiler suite (includes NVIDIA-compiled, CUDA-aware OpenMPI build)
HDF5
NetCDF
Parallel NetCDF
Generates a script that ensures the proper runtime environment for running AceCAST
Usage: ./install_deps.sh [--install-secondary-packages-rpm] [--install-secondary-packages-deb]
This will prompt the user to specify an installation directory for these dependencies (default: $HOME/tqi-build/20.7). It will also generate a script (default: $HOME/tqi-build/20.7/env.sh) that should be sourced to setup your runtime environment correctly prior to running any of the executables contained in the AceCAST distribution (i.e. real.exe, acecast.exe, wrf.exe, diffwrfs, etc.).
Important
This process can take up to an hour to complete and requires ~16GB of storage.
Example:
[acecast-user@localhost]$ cd AceCAST/scripts/
[acecast-user@localhost]$ ./install_deps.sh
Welcome to the AceCAST Package Installer
Checking for supported architecture
Supported architecture detected arch=Linux_x86_64
Enter directory you would like to install NVIDIA HPC SDK and associated packages in:
/home/ec2-user/tqi-build/20.7
Installing AceCAST dependent packages in /home/ec2-user/tqi-build/20.7
Installing NVIDIA HPC SDK version 20.7
Downloading file - https://developer.download.nvidia.com/hpc-sdk/20.7/nvhpc_2020_207_Linux_x86_64_cuda_multi.tar.gz
Extracting archive - nvhpc_2020_207_Linux_x86_64_cuda_multi.tar.gz
.................................successfully extracted archive - nvhpc_2020_207_Linux_x86_64_cuda_multi.tar.gz
Successfully patched SDK
Success: Successfully installed NVIDIA HPC SDK version 20.7
Building HDF5
Downloading file - http://www.hdfgroup.org/ftp/HDF5/releases/hdf5-1.12/hdf5-1.12.0/src/hdf5-1.12.0.tar.bz2
Extracting archive - hdf5-1.12.0.tar.bz2
.successfully extracted archive - hdf5-1.12.0.tar.bz2
Success: Successfully installed HDF5 version 1.12.0 in /home/ec2-user/tqi-build/20.7/hdf5
Building NetCDF C Libraries
Downloading file - https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-c/archive/v4.7.4.tar.gz
Extracting archive - v4.7.4.tar.gz
.successfully extracted archive - v4.7.4.tar.gz
Success: Successfully installed NETCDF-C version 4.7.4 in /home/ec2-user/tqi-build/20.7/netcdf
Building NetCDF Fortran Libraries
Downloading file - https://github.com/Unidata/netcdf-fortran/archive/v4.5.3.tar.gz
Extracting archive - v4.5.3.tar.gz
successfully extracted archive - v4.5.3.tar.gz
Success: Successfully installed NETCDF-Fortran version 4.5.3 in /home/ec2-user/tqi-build/20.7/netcdf
Building Parallel NetCDF Libraries
Downloading file - https://parallel-netcdf.github.io/Release/pnetcdf-1.12.1.tar.gz
Extracting archive - pnetcdf-1.12.1.tar.gz
successfully extracted archive - pnetcdf-1.12.1.tar.gz
Success: Successfully installed parallel-netcdf version 1.12.1 in /home/ec2-user/tqi-build/20.7/pnetcdf
Success: Successfully Installed AceCAST Dependency Packages
Environment setup script generated at /home/ec2-user/tqi-build/20.7/env.sh
We suggest running without the optional flags –install-secondary-packages-rpm or –install-secondary-packages-deb initially. If the script reports any issues then continue to the Installing with Secondary Dependencies section. Otherwise you can continue to the Running AceCAST page.
Installing with Secondary Dependencies
To run successfully, the installation script when run as-is (i.e. without the –install-secondary-packages-rpm or –install-secondary-packages-deb flags) requires a number of common packages that provide various utilities and libraries. Since they are so common it isn’t unusual for these packages to already be available on many users’ systems. When this is not the case these packages need to be installed with package repository managers such as yum or apt-get depending on the OS is running. Notably, this also requires administrator privileges.
If you would like to indicate that these packages should be installed, first ensure you have sudo privilages to install packages with yum or apt-get then run the install_deps.sh script with the appropriate flag:
Usage for RPM-based Linux Distributions: ./install_deps.sh --install-secondary-packages-rpm
Usage for Debian-based Linux Distributions: ./install_deps.sh --install-secondary-packages-deb
Troubleshooting
If you are still having issues, please check out the Troubleshooting section.