Running Apptainer on MacOS

[mlisondo]

options discussed: Lima ( https://apptainer.org/docs/admin/main/installation.html#mac ), UTM ( https://mac.getutm.app ), Vagrant ( ? )

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[michmx]

For the record: I tried to use Vagrant + VirtualBox 7.1, which supports Macs with ARM architecture. However,

> brew install vagrant 

> vagrant init almalinux/9
> vagrant up

Stderr: VBoxManage: error: The VM session was aborted
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component SessionMachine, interface ISession

And the error seems related to Vagrant pulling a AMD x86 image. Since it doesn't work out of the box, I would say let's discard it as an option and let's test Lima.

(Ping @mambelli )

[mlisondo]

I've been attempting to use Lima. I'm trying to run the Docker image of ROOT using Apptainer with

apptainer exec docker://rootproject/root root -b

but I receive an architecture mismatch error. This same error occurs when using a Podman container.

These are the commands I ran:

> $ /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

> $ brew install qemu lima

> limactl start template://apptainer

[chose 'Proceed with the current configuration']

> limactl shell apptainer

> mkdir -p ~/apptainer

> cd` ~/apptainer

> pwd

> curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apptainer/apptainer/main/tools/install-unprivileged.sh | bash -s - ~/apptainer

Required command(s) rpm2cpio not found

> sudo apt-get update

> sudo apt-get install -y rpm2cpio cpio

> curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apptainer/apptainer/main/tools/install-unprivileged.sh | bash -s - ~/apptainer

> ls /home/user.linux/apptainer

aarch64  bin

> ls /home/user.linux/apptainer/bin

apptainer  singularity

> ls /home/user.linux/apptainer/aarch64

bin  etc  libexec  share  utils  var

> /home/user.linux/apptainer/bin/apptainer --version

apptainer version 1.3.6-1.el8

> export PATH=/home/user.linux/apptainer/bin:$PATH

> apptainer --version

apptainer version 1.3.6-1.el8

> apptainer remote add --no-login SylabsCloud cloud.sycloud.io

> apptainer remote use SylabsCloud

> apptainer search centos7

No container images found for arm64 matching "centos7".

> apptainer pull docker://centos:centos7

> apptainer shell centos_centos7.sif

Apptainer> id

uid=501(user) gid=1000(user) groups=1000(user)

Apptainer> exit

exit

> apptainer exec docker://rootproject/root root -b

INFO:    Converting OCI blobs to SIF format
INFO:    Starting build...
...
INFO:    Creating SIF file...
FATAL:   While checking container encryption: could not open image /home/user.linux/.apptainer/cache/oci-tmp/071ed7dea26f5a05cdf8132bb6672b7aca745cc3702870d1ce1e5a7f75ccd3ab: the image's architecture (amd64) could not run on the host's (arm64)

I don't know if the image of ROOT is an important step for this tutorial or if its just taken as an example of an 'exec' command, but it doesn't seem to be compatible with apple silicon. Is there a way to list ARM64-compatible ROOT images? I'll continue doing the tutorial and see if I run into any more errors.

[mambelli]

LiMa runs a VM to start the apptainer containers.
Some containers are available for multiple architectures, some are only for x86_64 (Intel).
To run the latter either you setup Apptainer to use QEMU (and install it in the VM), or, more straightforward, run a x86_64 VM and use Apptainer there.
Install lima via Homebrew

/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
brew install qemu lima

Prepare a x86_64 VM:

cat > ubuntu-x86_64.yaml << EOF 
arch: "x86_64"
images:
  - location: "https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/jammy/current/jammy-server-cloudimg-amd64.img"
    arch: "x86_64"
  - location: "https://cloud-images.ubuntu.com/jammy/current/jammy-server-cloudimg-arm64.img"
    arch: "aarch64"
# Disable mounts and containerd, otherwise booting up may time out if the host is slow
mounts: []
containerd:
  system: false
  user: false
EOF
# now create and start
limactl start ubuntu-x86_64.yaml --name=ubuntu
limactl shell ubuntu

In the VM install and use apptainer:

sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:apptainer/ppa
sudo apt install -y apptainer
apptainer --version
apptainer exec docker://rootproject/root root -b

[mambelli]

Fixed via PR #123

[stale]

This issue or pull request has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. Please manually close it, if it is no longer relevant, or ask for help or support to help getting it unstuck. Let me bring this to the attention of @klieret @wdconinc @michmx for now.