How To Guide

How to setup a schedule pipeline

First go to CI/CD > Schedules and create a schedule pipeline. You should see a similar pipeline for another stack. The schedule pipeline contains a unique variable PIPELINE_NAME which is the name of E4S stack to run. The value is all CAPS, so if you want to trigger E4S 23.05 stack for Perlmutter, the value will be PERLMUTTER_E4S_23.05. Please make sure the variable PIPELINE_NAME matches the one you defined in .gitlab-ci.yml for your job. The pipeline can be run via web interface, if you chose this route, just set PIPELINE_NAME to the appropriate value.

The reason why we setup schedule pipeline and web-interface is to allow one to trigger pipeline automatically at schedule interval or trigger pipeline manually such that a commit is not required to trigger pipeline. This is useful when one needs to check if pipeline can rebuild at any given time due to system change.

How to find available runners

You can find all runners by going to Settings > CI/CD > Runners.

This project is configured with gitlab runner for Perlmutter and Muller using the production account e4s. Shown below are the available runners

Gitlab Runner by NERSC system

System	Runner Name
Perlmutter	perlmutter-e4s
Muller	muller-e4s

The runner configuration files are located in directory ~/.gitlab-runner for user e4s.

How to register gitlab runner

We have a script titled register.sh that is responsible for registering a gitlab runner. This script will expect a registration token which can be found at Settings > CI/CD > Runners. Shown below is the script used to register the runner on Perlmutter, once you execute the script, you will be prompted for the registration token.

e4s:login37> cat ~/register.sh
#!/bin/bash

read -sp "Registration Token?" TOKEN
gitlab-runner register \
    --url https://software.nersc.gov \
    --registration-token ${TOKEN} \
        --tag-list ${NERSC_HOST}-${USER} \
    --name "E4S Runner on Perlmutter" \
    --executor custom \
    --custom-config-exec "/global/homes/e/e4s/jacamar/binaries/jacamar-auth" \
    --custom-config-args "-u config --configuration /global/homes/e/e4s/.gitlab-runner/jacamar.toml" \
    --custom-prepare-exec "/global/homes/e/e4s/jacamar/binaries/jacamar-auth" \
    --custom-prepare-args "prepare" \
    --custom-run-exec  "/global/homes/e/e4s/jacamar/binaries/jacamar-auth" \
    --custom-run-args "run" \
    --custom-cleanup-exec "/global/homes/e/e4s/jacamar/binaries/jacamar-auth" \
    --custom-cleanup-args "cleanup --configuration /global/homes/e/e4s/.gitlab-runner/jacamar.toml" \
    --config /global/homes/e/e4s/.gitlab-runner/perlmutter.config.toml