Note: this is ONLY for UoL students with ACCESS to the Bragg Compute Cluster.

ROS Jazzy Apptainer Setup

Follow each bullet point in steps below.

1. Open the terminal app in uni cluster (press Windows Key ⊞ and search for terminal).

If you are using your own laptop go to this section to setup VPN and remotely access Bragg Computers.

1. Run the bragg setup script to get code in your shared bragg computer

Download the file setup.sh inside the apptainer folder and open up a terminal to follow the instructions below

chmod u+x setup.sh
bash setup.sh

When you see the REPL below you are inside your Apptainer container.

Apptainer>

2. Inside your container build all the ros2 packages by following the commands below

cd ~/colcon_ws
source /opt/ros/jazzy/setup.bash
colcon build --symlink-install --packages-skip bringup

NOTE: make sure you don't have any active python environments in background (mainly conda) or else colcon won't work

Apptainer>

3. Sourcing environment and getting the Apptainer> repl in a new terminal session.

The setup.sh script created the following files: ~/.fsairc and the alias: fsai

fsai

You are now inside the apptainer container: ros_jazzy.sif located in /local/data/$USER/.

When inside run the command to source ros2 and colcon_ws

source ~/.fsairc

You can now try running ros2 launch simulation command from the bottom of main README

Creating your Custom Apptainer Container with extra dependencies

• cd /local/data/$USER

That ros_jazzy.sif script takes around 10 minutes to complete, to add your own dependencies without waiting for 15 minutes or breaking things accidentally the custom.def file exists.

Familiarize yourself with containers if you haven't used containers before, if you have apptainer docs is self-explanatory.

Add your custom dependencies or files in /local/data/$USER

• add any local files you can't extract from web eg things like installer (e.g. ros_jazzy.def used ZED_SDK installer, cuda key ring, .deb files etc.
• creating your own bash script e.g: setup_username_custom.sh is a good idea to keep track of files you added for your custom.def
• make sure to add to the %files%
• usually done by apt-get -y <ros-pkg-name> in the %runscript% section of custom.def

Build your custom container and enter it with:

apptainer build custom.sif custom.def
apptainer shell --nv custom.sif

Update our fsai alias & create your .fsarc files for ease.

Accessing University Apptainer containers remotely using SSH with GUI

Over weekends or out of uni hours you can access your containers using the method below.

Get uol vpn: Ivanti Secure Access Client Download

• Add UOL VPN server url <server-url>
• Go to feng-linux.leeds.ac.uk on your browser
• ssh -Y <username>@uol-pc-<id> make sure to note the <id> of local pc where you installed your containers

Note: If above doesn't work pc must be remotely powered on by following the steps below:

module add wol
wol -h <ip> <mac>

Continue setting things up by following the instructions above

Email or message on Teams the Technical Director: sc23pg@leeds.ac.uk for the values of <server-url> as I am not sure I can share this in a public repo.

You can find your ip and mac using: ip addr show and hostname using hostname.

Turning on the computer may take a few minutes, then you can ssh into it.

Setting up IPG Carmaker

Checkout out Carmaker setup

Troubleshooting

Disk Quota Limit Exceeded:

You shouldn't get this if you have used /local/data/$USER if you do let Technical Director know.

• run quota to check your disk quota
• run du -sh * | sort -h at ~ to see where disk space is being used
• carefully use rm to free up space, be sure to backup or important files (eg git commits)

Note: the ros_jazzy.sif file should only take up: 12 GB of space.

• Read more about Disk Quotas or contact admin if you still run into issues or need more space.

• This is why we are using the shared disk space in /local/data not the NFS shared across university networks, which has ~15 GB quota per student.