What is the Modules package?
We are using the Modules package to manipulate user environments.
Modules is a set of tools that allows users to
modify their environment (which consists of variables and search-paths
needed to run various applications, see above). The Modules package is
initialized with the following lines in your .cshrc
file (assming that you are running tcsh):
# initialize and load modules
unsetenv PATH MANPATH
if( -e /usr/local/share/modules/init/tcsh ) then
source /usr/local/share/modules/init/tcsh
endif
module load base
Please do not remove them. As you can see above, Modules syntax is
basically:
% module <action> [modulefile name(s)]
In the above case, we are "loading" a module (or modulefile, we'll
refer to them as modules) called "base". The "base" module sets the PATH
and MANPATH variables, and a few others, so that you may access most standard
Unix system applications.
In order to keep your paths within the space limits of the system*,
we have set up individual modules for special software packages.
For example, to run the Midas package, the Midas module must be loaded.
This can be done with the following command:
% module load midas
When you are finished with Midas, you could unload the module:
% module unload midas
If you find yourself frequently using Midas, you could edit your
.cshrc file to load the midas module automatically with the command:
module load base midas
Note that the "base" module should always be loaded first.
To obtain a list of available modules, use the command module avail or see the list of modules (above). Man
pages are available as module(1) and modulefile(5).
------
* Unix paths are limited to a certain amount of space. Setting the PATH
and MANPATH variables to include every software package installed on our
systems is not possible. The Modules package allows you to set only
the paths that you need and to unset these paths when you are finished.