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Warning

This is as a Lab Notebook which describes how to solve a specific problem at a specific time. Please keep this in mind as you read and use the content. Please pay close attention to the date, version information and other details.

Running Praat on HPCC (2022-10-08)

I got Praat working on the system. It requires a newer version of CentOS and a few tricks but it is working. To start we need to make a folder with a singularity overlay in it and add conda (for dependencies):

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mkdir praat
cd praat
module load powertools
overlay_build
overlay_resize 10
overlay_install_conda

Next we need to download a CentOS8 image which has the some upgraded libraries that praat needs:

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singularity pull --arch amd64 library://godloved/secure/centos8:20200805.0.0
mv centos8_20200805.0.0.sif centos8.sif

Now we can start singularity with the overlay and install some requirements (actually, mfa is not a requirement but this research team is using it for something else):

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overlay_start overlay.img centos8.sif
conda install -c conda-forge gtk3

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conda install -c conda-forge pulseaudio

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conda install -c conda-forge montreal-forced-aligner

Finally, we can download praat and copy it to our singularity image:

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wget https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/praat6223_linux64.tar.gz
tar -xzvf praat6223_linux64.tar.gz
mv ./praat /praat

That should be it. We now connect to the HPCC using an X11 connection. The easiest way to do that is to start an interactive desktop form OnDemand. Once the desktop is running, open a terminal, change to the praat directory and run the following command:

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cd praat
singularity exec -B /usr/bin/:/sysbin/ \
                 --env LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/miniconda3/lib:/.singularity.d/lib \
                 --env TERM=vt100 \
                 --env PATH=/miniconda3/bin/:/usr/local/sbin:/usr
/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/sysbin/ \
                 --overlay overlay.img centos8.sif /praat

I also have an OnDemand App working in a basic dev environment but need to do some testing to find an easy way to share overlay images.

This overview of singularity was initially written by Dirk Colbry and is just intended of an example of how to install and run things on the HPCC. Please contact the ICER User Support Team if you need any help getting your workflow up and running.

link to ICER User Support Team online contact form