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Hi Chris, I went to a talk recently by someone who had been trying out Singularity and was similarly confused to start with. I think root (or sudo) access is needed in order to create a container, but that it can then be run without root access. So a user who is not trusted by you, but has root access on e.g. their own laptop, can create an image and run it on your system. Cheers, Ben On 06/12/2018 12:04, Chris Brew - UKRI STFC wrote: > Hi All, > > As is often the case, I am confused. Specifically today, I am confused about about Singularity Containers. > > A bit of background; I’ve been getting several requests in from different people saying “I want version X.Y.Z of root|Python|gcc|whatever, and your version of CentOS/SL only has A.B.C”. Now there are various ways of satisfying people (/cvmfs/software.cern.ch is a very good resource) but this sounded like an ideal use case for containers. > > I’ve gone off and looked at the Singularity documentation and although it makes a big thing of “Untrusted images from untrusted users” all the example commands for building images start with ‘sudo singularity…’ > > So, can users build their own images without sudo or is their definition of an “untrusted” user different to mine? > > The second related thing I’m confused about is the different image formats, I cannot seem to find a comparison between them with pros and cons. And on that is there a specific issue with images that need loopback devices? > > Yours, > Chris. > > -- > Dr Chris Brew > Scientific Computing Manager > Particle Physics Department > UKRI - STFC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory > Harwell Oxford, > Didcot > OX11 0QX > +44 1235 446326 > > > ######################################################################## > > To unsubscribe from the TB-SUPPORT list, click the following link: > https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=TB-SUPPORT&A=1 > -- Dr Ben Waugh Tel. +44 (0)20 7679 7223 Computing and IT Manager Internal: 37223 Dept of Physics and Astronomy University College London London WC1E 6BT ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the TB-SUPPORT list, click the following link: https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?SUBED1=TB-SUPPORT&A=1