Installing the QluMan GUI
The QluMan GUI is distributed as a Singularity container image and is available on the Qlustar Download page. The packaging in a container makes it really easy to start the GUI and the required bundled components (like firefox and keepassxc) as a non-root user on any machine with Singularity (or apptainer) installed (minimum Singularity version is 3.2 for QluMan 14 containers). Just download the desired version of the image, check its sha256sum, make it executable and execute it.
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While technically possible, the Qlustar management GUI qluman-qt should not be installed as a Debian package on the cluster. This is because the installation on the head-node (or a chroot) pulls and installs a large number of additional packages that qluman-qt depends on. When updating the cluster this will slow down the process considerably. Furthermore, in this case the GUI has to be started via remote X11, which is often very sluggish, especially on lossy or slow network connections. |
Detailed Installation Instructions
First download and install singularity-ce or apptainer. Here we use apptainer and assume a Debian-based OS on the workstation. For an RPM-based OS download the corresponding RPM apptainer package and use yum or dnf to install:
0 user@workstation ~ $
version=1.4.4 # The version to install
0 user@workstation ~ $
wget https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/releases/download/v${version}/apptainer_${version}_amd64.deb
0 user@workstation ~ $
sha256sum apptainer_${version}_amd64.deb # Compare to the value on the github page
0 user@workstation ~ $
sudo apt install ./apptainer_${version}_amd64.deb
Now download the QluMan GUI container image. We suggest to install it in /usr/local/bin on
your workstation which is typically part of the executable PATH for ordinary Linux users.
0 user@workstation ~ $ version=14.0.7; image=qluman-$version-singularity.sqsh # The version to install 0 user@workstation ~ $ wget https://qlustar.com/downloads/$image 0 user@workstation ~ $ sha256sum $image # Compare to the value on the Download page 0 user@workstation ~ $ sudo mv $image /usr/local/bin 0 user@workstation ~ $ sudo chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/$image 0 user@workstation ~ $ for link in qluman-qt qluman-qt-$version; do \ sudo ln -sf $image /usr/local/bin/$link; done
This procedure should allow to start the GUI for any user of the workstation as follows:
0 user@workstation ~ $ qluman-qt
When you download a new version just repeat the above qluman install procedure and the new
version will be callable as qluman-qt. Any other version can still explicitly be executed by
executing the version link, e.g.
0 user@workstation ~ $ qluman-qt-14.0.7
Using a one-time token generated previously as explained here, you will now be able to add the cluster to the list of available connections.
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The changelog of the QluMan version inside the container may be inspected by executing the following command: 0 user@workstation ~ $ singularity exec /usr/local/bin/qluman-qt \ zless /usr/share/doc/qluman-qt-14/changelog.gz |
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The version of the QluMan packages/containers on the workstation should be the same as on the head-node(s) to ensure correct operation. Running a newer GUI version with an older server often works as well, but there is no guarantee and support for such combinations. |
Installing and running under Windows
Since the release of WSL 2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux 2) it is easily possible to run the QluMan GUI directly on a Windows workstation (requires Windows 10 Version 2004 and higher or Windows 11 ). This is a fully supported and tested way to run qluman-qt.
WSL 2 is a seamlessly integrated sub-component of Windows that allows to run Linux virtual machines on top of a modern Linux kernel with specific drivers for accessing Windows OS resources. To install and run the QluMan GUI, all you need to do is to install (see general WSL install instructions) Ubuntu 24.04 (Qlustar recommended and tested) as WSL Linux distribution. Open PowerShell in administrator mode and enter the following command.:
PS C:\> wsl --install Ubuntu-24.04
When completed, restart your workstation and once rebooted, open a PowerShell again and start a shell as the WSL Linux user you created during install as follows:
PS C:\> wsl
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The command above assumes that the just installed Ubuntu 24.04 is the default WSL Linux distribution. If that is not the case, explicitly specify it: PS C:\> wsl --distribution Ubuntu-24.04 |
From here on, you can proceed as described above to finally execute qluman-qt.