Setting Up RHEL8 Development Environment

2024-5-13

Overview

These steps setup a development environment for CoastNet. The target platform is GPU enabled x86 based processor running RHEL8 in AWS.

Steps

1. Logging in the first time

ssh -i .ssh/<mykey>.pem ec2-user@<ip address>
sudo subscription-manager register
sudo dnf upgrade --refresh

2. Creating Users

sudo useradd -m -s /usr/bin/bash <username>
sudo passwd <username>
sudo usermod -aG wheel <username>
su - <username>

3. Setup Bash

Replace the appropriate section in the .bashrc file with the contents below

parse_git_branch() {
     git branch 2> /dev/null | sed -e '/^[^*]/d' -e 's/* \(.*\)/ (\1)/'
}
PS1="\n\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]\[\033[33m\] [\$CONDA_DEFAULT_ENV]\$(parse_git_branch):\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\n\$ "

Setup core dumps by adding the following to the end of the .bashrc file

ulimit -c unlimited

4. Managing Keys for GitHub

create a key on the server, while logged into your account: ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"
add the key as an ssh key to your github account

5. Managing Keys for Remote Login

create a local key on your laptop or desktop for remote use: ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096 -C "your_email@example.com"
your new key is located in .ssh/id_rsa.pub
to log into a remote server with this key, while on the remote server copy and paste the key into the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
make sure the permissions on the .ssh/authorized_keys file is 644

6. Install and Configure Git

sudo dnf install git

Create the local file ~/.gitconfig in the user’s home directory with the following contents:

[user]
	name = <name>
	email = <email>

[push]
    default = simple

[diff]
    tool = vimdiff

[merge]
    tool = vimdiff

[difftool]
    prompt = false

[mergetool]
    keepBackup = false

[difftool "vimdiff"]
    cmd = vimdiff "$LOCAL" "$REMOTE"

[alias]
    dd = difftool --dir-diff

[credential "https://github.com"]
	helper =
	helper = !/usr/bin/gh auth git-credential

[credential "https://gist.github.com"]
	helper =
	helper = !/usr/bin/gh auth git-credential

Install Large File System for Git

sudo dnf install wget
wget --content-disposition "https://packagecloud.io/github/git-lfs/packages/el/8/git-lfs-3.5.1-1.el8.x86_64.rpm/download.rpm?distro_version_id=205"
sudo rpm -i git-lfs-3.5.1-1.el8.x86_64.rpm
git lfs install

7. Clone Projects

mkdir meta
cd meta
git clone https://github.com/jeffsp/coastnet

8. Install Dependencies for Local Build

First configure the development repositories for the package manager:

sudo subscription-manager config --rhsm.manage_repos=1
sudo subscription-manager repos --enable=codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-x86_64-rpms
sudo dnf install -y https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm
sudo dnf install -y epel-release

Install the build requirements:

sudo dnf groupinstall "Development Tools"
sudo dnf install \
    cmake \
    cppcheck \
    opencv-devel \
    python3.9  \
    parallel \
    gmp-devel \
    mlpack-devel \
    mlpack-bin \
    gdal-devel \
    armadillo-devel \
    gcc-toolset-12

Install the NVIDIA drivers:

dnf config-manager --add-repo https://developer.download.nvidia.com/compute/cuda/repos/rhel8/x86_64/cuda-rhel8.repo
dnf -y install cuda libcudnn8 libcudnn8-devel

Setup the Python environment for the build

python3.9 -m venv venv
source ./venv/bin/activate
python -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip install torch numpy pandas

9. Configure Environment for Build

source ~/venv/bin/activate
source /opt/rh/gcc-toolset-12/enable
CUDACXX=/usr/local/cuda/bin/nvcc

export PATH=/usr/local/cuda/bin\({PATH:+:\){PATH}} export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/cuda/lib64\({LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:\){LD_LIBRARY_PATH}}