Installing Java applications

💬 Java applications do not typically require special installation.

  • You just need to download the distribution package, typically a .jar file.

💡 Compute nodes do not have a default Java installation, so you need to load a suitable Java module.

You can check the available modules with the command:

module spider java

☝🏻 Some Java applications fail to run on the login nodes. Try running them using sinteractive instead (or by opening a compute node shell in the Roihu web interface).

‼️ Naturally, computationally heavy tasks should be never ran on the login nodes.

💡 The compute nodes have very limited /tmp space. If you have to set the temporary file location for a Java application, you can use:

export _JAVA_OPTIONS=-Djava.io.tmpdir=/path/to/tmp  # replace with the actual path 

Example: Installing ABRA2

💬 In this example we’ll install and run the Java application ABRA2.

  1. Create a personal folder (if not done already) under your project’s /projappl directory and move there. Then create (and move to) a new directory for the installation:

    cd /projappl/<project>  # replace <project> with your CSC project, e.g. project_2001234
    mkdir -p $USER
    cd $USER
    mkdir abra2
    cd abra2
    
  2. Download the software:

    wget https://github.com/mozack/abra2/releases/download/v2.24/abra2-2.24.jar
    
  3. Load a Java module:

    module load biojava
    

    💡 If you get error messages or warnings about the Java version, try loading another Java module.

  4. Run the application:

    java -jar abra2-2.24.jar
    

    💡 If you are not in the same directory as the .jar file, you need to include the full path to the file, e.g.

    java -jar /projappl/<project>/$USER/abra2/abra2-2.24.jar  # replace <project> with your CSC project, e.g. project_2001234, and ensure that the path corresponds to the true path