A Docker image has been created that contains all of the LSST pipeline software as well as the simulation software. It is available from the Docker repository as jamespepcc/lsstsimulations:1.1.
To run the image:
docker run -ti jamespepcc/lsstsimulations:1.1
(You may need to include additional command line options if you wish to make use of shared folders, port forwarding, or other Docker features).
Within the container, sourcing the loadLSST.bash script (or the equivalent for your shell) will set up the environment ready for using the LSST software. Individual packages can then be initialised using the setup command. So to set up for using MAF, for example, you need to run the following:
source /opt/lsst/software/stack/loadLSST.bash
setup sims_maf -t sims
For more information on how to find out what packages are available, install more packages, etc., please see the /wiki/spaces/COL/pages/65208358 documentation.
MAF Tutorial Notebooks
A set of iPython tutorial notebooks for the MAF software is available from GitHub. After running the Docker image (or installing the LSST simulation software some other way), clone:
https://github.com/LSST-nonproject/sims_maf_contrib.git
The tutorial notebooks are in the tutorials directory within this repository. Please see the /wiki/spaces/COL/pages/52161514 wiki page for information about how to launch Jupyter notebooks within Docker.
Many of the notebooks require SQLite databases in order to run. These can be downloaded from:
http://ops2.tuc.noao.edu/runs/enigma_1189/data/enigma_1189_sqlite.db.gz
http://ops2.tuc.noao.edu/runs/ops2_1114/data/ops1_1114_sqlite.db
http://opsim.lsst.org/runs/reference_run/minion_1016/minion_1016_sqlite.db.gz
The majority of the notebooks work fine once the data has been downloaded, unzipped (if applicable) and placed in the directory along with the notebooks. However, some will give errors if run with the current stable version of the MAF software, and only work with the latest development version from Github (see https://github.com/lsst/sims_maf).
Two of the notebooks could not be run due to the input data not being available:
- SDSSSlicer requires a connection to the "fatboy-private" database at the University of Washington, which I do not have an account for.
- Slicers requires a data set called pontus_1074 which I was not able to find anywhere online.
Differences from LSST Docker Container
This Docker container is based on a container provided by LSST, containing much of the LSST software stack (lsstsqre/centos:7-stack-lsst_distrib-v13_0), but with several additional software packages installed. This additional software is:
- Pip, a tool used to easily install other Python software
- python-devel, required in order to install some of the modules below
- jupyter, the iPython notebook software
- matplotlib, astropy and sncosmo, required by some of the tutorial notebooks
- lsst_sims, containing all of the LSST simulation software
The Dockerfiles used to build the simulations container (and the "tutorial" container on which it is based) are attached to this wiki page.