The Singularity Container Services (SCS) Library is the place to :ref:`push <push>` your containers to the cloud so other users can :ref:`pull <pull>`, :ref:`verify <signNverify>`, and use them.
SCS also provides a :ref:`Remote Builder <remote_builder>`, allowing you to build containers on a secure remote service. This is convenient so that you can build containers on systems where you do not have root privileges.
Making an account is easy, and straightforward:
- Go to: https://cloud.sylabs.io/library.
- Click "Sign in to Sylabs" (top right corner).
- Select your method to sign in, with Google, GitHub, GitLab, or Microsoft.
- Type your passwords, and that's it!
Access tokens for pushing a container, and remote builder.
To generate a access token, do the following steps:
- Go to: https://cloud.sylabs.io/
- Click "Sign In" and follow the sign in steps.
- Click on your login id (same and updated button as the Sign in one).
- Select "Access Tokens" from the drop down menu.
- Enter a name for your new access token, such as "test token"
- Click the "Create a New Access Token" button.
- Click "Copy token to Clipboard" from the "New API Token" page.
- Run
singularity remote login
and paste the access token at the prompt.
Now that you have your token, you are ready to push your container!
The singularity push
command will push a container to the container
library with the given URL. Here's an example of a typical push command:
$ singularity push my-container.sif library://your-name/project-dir/my-container:latest
The :latest
is the container tag. Tags are used to have different
version of the same container.
Note
When pushing your container, there's no need to add a .sif
(Singularity Image Format) to the end of the container name, (like on
your local machine), because all containers on the library are SIF
containers.
Let's assume you have your container (v1.0.1), and you want to push that
container without deleting your :latest
container, then you can add
a version tag to that container, like so:
$ singularity push my-container.sif library://your-name/project-dir/my-container:1.0.1
You can download the container with that tag by replacing the
:latest
, with the tagged container you want to download.
To set a description against the container image as you push it, use the -D flag introduced in {Singularity} 3.7. This provides an alternative to setting the description via the web interface:
$ singularity push -D "My alpine 3.11 container" alpine_3.11.sif library://myuser/examples/alpine:3.11
2.7MiB / 2.7MiB [=========================================================================] 100 % 1.1 MiB/s 0s
Library storage: using 13.24 MiB out of 11.00 GiB quota (0.1% used)
Container URL: https://cloud.sylabs.io/library/myuser/examples/alpine
Note that when you push to a library that supports it, {Singularity} 3.7 and above will report your quota usage and the direct URL to view the container in your web browser.
If you are using {Singularity} 4's new OCI-mode, you may wish to push OCI-SIF
images to a library://
destination. The standard push
command can be
used, and {Singularity} will perform the push as an OCI image.
Instead of uploading the container as a single SIF file, the OCI configuration and layer blobs that are encapsulated in the OCI-SIF will be uploaded to the OCI registry that sits behind the SCS / Singularity Enterprise Library.
Note
The OCI image specification doesn't support SIF signatures, or any additional partitions that can be added to SIF (including OCI-SIF) files by {Singularity}.
If you have signed an OCI-SIF image locally, the signature(s) will not be
pushed to the library. You may wish to push the OCI-SIF, as a single file, to
an OCI registry using the oras://
protocol instead.
Pushing OCI-SIF containers to the library in this manner means that they can be
accessed by other OCI tools. For example, you can use the Skopeo CLI tool to examine the image in the registry
after it has been pushed. First, push
an OCI-SIF to the SCS library://
.
The -U
option is needed because the image is unsigned.
$ singularity push -U alpine_latest.oci.sif library://example/userdoc/alpine:latest WARNING: Skipping container verification INFO: Pushing an OCI-SIF to the library OCI registry. Use `--oci` to pull this image.
Now use skopeo
to access the image in the library. This requires
authentication, which is handled automatically when you use singularity
push
. For other tools, {Singularity} provides a command singularity remote
get-login-password
that will provide a token that we can use to login to
registry.sylabs.io
, which is the address of the OCI registry backing the SCS
library.
$ singularity remote get-login-password | \ skopeo login -u example --password-stdin registry.sylabs.io Login Succeeded!
Finally, use skopeo inspect
to examine the image pushed earlier:
$ skopeo inspect docker://registry.sylabs.io/example/userdoc/alpine:latest { "Name": "registry.sylabs.io/example/userdoc/alpine", "Digest": "sha256:d08ad9745675812310727c0a99a4472b82fb1cc81e5c42ceda023f1bc35ca34a", "RepoTags": [ "latest" ], "Created": "2023-08-07T20:16:26.309461618Z", "DockerVersion": "", "Labels": null, "Architecture": "amd64", "Os": "linux", "Layers": [ "sha256:a0c5ced3a57bd1d0d71aaf4a0ea6131d5f163a4a8c5355468c18d4ef006f5d7d" ], "LayersData": [ { "MIMEType": "application/vnd.sylabs.image.layer.v1.squashfs", "Digest": "sha256:a0c5ced3a57bd1d0d71aaf4a0ea6131d5f163a4a8c5355468c18d4ef006f5d7d", "Size": 3248128, "Annotations": null } ], "Env": [ "PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin" ] }
Because the OCI-SIF was pushed as an OCI image, skopeo inspect
is able to
show the image configuration. This is not possible for non-OCI-SIF images:
$ skopeo inspect docker://registry.sylabs.io/library/default/alpine:latest FATA[0001] unsupported image-specific operation on artifact with type "application/vnd.sylabs.sif.config.v1+json"
The singularity pull
command will download a container from the
Library (library://
), Docker
Hub (docker://
), and also Shub (shub://
).
Note
When pulling from Docker, the container will automatically be converted to a SIF (Singularity Image Format) container.
Here's a typical pull command:
$ singularity pull file-out.sif library://alpine:latest # or pull from docker: $ singularity pull file-out.sif docker://alpine:latest
Note
If there's no tag after the container name, {Singularity}
automatically will pull the container with the :latest
tag.
To pull a container with a specific tag, just add the tag to the library URL:
$ singularity pull file-out.sif library://alpine:3.8
Of course, you can pull your own containers. Here's what that will look like:
Pulling your own container is just like pulling from Github, Docker, etc...
$ singularity pull out-file.sif library://your-name/project-dir/my-container:latest # or use a different tag: $ singularity pull out-file.sif library://your-name/project-dir/my-container:1.0.1
Note
You don't have to specify a output file, one will be created automatically, but it's good practice to always specify your output file.
If you are using {Singularity} 4's new OCI-mode and have pushed OCI-SIF
containers to the SCS library, they are stored as OCI images in the OCI registry
that backs the library. You can pull these images with the standard pull
command:
$ singularity pull library://sylabs/test/alpine-oci-sif:latest INFO: sylabs/test/alpine-oci-sif:latest is an OCI image, attempting to fetch as an OCI-SIF Getting image source signatures Copying blob af32528d4445 done Copying config a5d222bd0d done Writing manifest to image destination INFO: Writing OCI-SIF image INFO: Cleaning up. WARNING: integrity: signature not found for object group 1 WARNING: Skipping container verification
Note that {Singularity} detects the image is an OCI image, and automatically retrieves it to an OCI-SIF file.
If the image was a non-OCI-SIF, built for {Singularity}'s default native mode,
then it would be retrieved as-is. To ensure that an image retrieved from a
library://
URI is an OCI-SIF, use the --oci
flag. This will produce an
error if a non-OCI-SIF is pulled:
$ singularity pull --oci library://sylabs/examples/ruby Getting image source signatures Copying blob a21814eefb7f done Copying config 5211e7986c done Writing manifest to image destination INFO: Cleaning up. FATAL: While pulling library image: error fetching image: while creating OCI-SIF: while checking OCI image: json: cannot unmarshal string into Go struct field ConfigFile.rootfs of type v1.RootFS
By default, singularity pull
from a library://
URI will attempt to fetch
a container that matches the architecture of your host system. If you need to
retrieve a container that does not have the same architecture as your host (e.g.
an arm64
container on an amd64
host), you can use the --platform
or
--arch
options.
The --arch
option accepts a CPU architecture only. For example, to pull an
Ubuntu image for a 64-bit ARM system:
$ singularity pull --arch arm64 library://ubuntu
The --platform
option accepts an OCI platform string. This has two or three
parts, separated by forward slashes (/
):
- An OS value. Only
linux
is supported by {Singularity}. - A CPU architecture value, e.g.
arm64
. - An optional CPU variant, e.g.
v8
.
Note that the library does not support CPU variants. Any CPU variant provided will be ignored.
To pull an Ubuntu image for a 64-bit ARM system from the library, using the
--platform
option:
$ singularity pull --platform linux/arm64 library://ubuntu
Verify containers that you pull from the library, ensuring they are bit-for-bit reproductions of the original image.
Check out :ref:`this page <signNverify>` on how to: :ref:`verify a container <verify_container_from_library>`, :ref:`making PGP key, and sign your own containers <sign_your_own_containers>`.
To find interesting or useful containers in the library, you can open https://cloud.sylabs.io/library in your browser and search from there through the web GUI.
Alternatively, from the CLI you can use singularity search <query>
.
This will search the library for container images matching <query>
.
Here is an example of searching the library for centos
:
singularity search centos
Found 72 container images for amd64 matching "centos":
library://dcsouthwick/iotools/centos7:latest
library://dcsouthwick/iotools/centos7:sha256.48e81523aaad3d74e7af8b154ac5e75f2726cc6cab37f718237d8f89d905ff89
Minimal centos7 image from yum bootstrap
library://dtrudg/linux/centos:7,centos7,latest
library://dtrudg/linux/centos:centos6,6
library://emmeff/centos/centos:8
library://essen1999/default/centos-tree:latest
library://gallig/default/centos_benchmark-signed:7.7.1908
Signed by: 6B44B0BC9CD273CC6A71DA8CED6FA43EF8771A02
library://gmk/default/centos7-devel:latest
Signed by: 7853F08767A4596B3C1AD95E48E1080AB16ED1BC
Containers can have multiple tags, and these are shown separated by
commas after the :
in the URL. E.g.
library://dtrudg/linux/centos:7,centos7,latest
is a single container
image with 3 tags, 7
, centos7
, and latest
. You can
singularity pull
the container image using any one of these tags.
Note that the results show amd64
containers only. By default
search
returns only containers with an architecture matching your
current system. To e.g. search for arm64
containers from an
amd64
machine you can use the --arch
flag:
singularity search --arch arm64 alpine
Found 5 container images for arm64 matching "alpine":
library://dtrudg-sylabs-2/multiarch/alpine:latest
library://geoffroy.vallee/alpine/alpine:latest
Signed by: 9D56FA7CAFB4A37729751B8A21749D0D6447B268
library://library/default/alpine:3.11.5,latest,3,3.11
library://library/default/alpine:3.9,3.9.2
library://sylabs/tests/passphrase_encrypted_alpine:3.11.5
You can also limit results to only signed containers with the
--signed
flag:
singularity search --signed alpine
Found 45 container images for amd64 matching "alpine":
library://deep/default/alpine:latest,1.0.1
Signed by: 8883491F4268F173C6E5DC49EDECE4F3F38D871E
library://godloved/secure/alpine:20200514.0.0
Signed base image built directly from mirrors suitable for secure building. Make sure to check that the fingerprint is B7761495F83E6BF7686CA5F0C1A7D02200787921
Signed by: B7761495F83E6BF7686CA5F0C1A7D02200787921
library://godlovedc/blah/alpine:sha256.63259fd0a2acb88bb652702c08c1460b071df51149ff85dc88db5034532a14a0
Signed by: 8883491F4268F173C6E5DC49EDECE4F3F38D871E
library://heffaywrit/base/alpine:latest
Signed by: D4038BDDE21017435DFE5ADA9F2D10A25D64C1EF
library://hellseva/class/alpine:latest
Signed by: 6D60F95E86A593603897164F8E09E44D12A7111C
library://hpc110/default/alpine-miniconda:cupy
Signed by: 9FF48D6202271D3C842C53BD0D237BE8BB5B5C76
...
The remote builder service can build your container in the cloud removing the requirement for root access.
Here's a typical remote build command:
$ singularity build --remote file-out.sif docker://ubuntu:22.04
This is our definition file. Let's call it ubuntu.def
:
bootstrap: library
from: ubuntu:22.04
%runscript
echo "hello world from ubuntu container!"
Now, to build the container, use the --remote
flag, and without
sudo
:
$ singularity build --remote ubuntu.sif ubuntu.def
Note
Make sure you have a :ref:`access token <creating_a_access_token>`, otherwise the build will fail.
After building, you can test your container like so:
$ ./ubuntu.sif hello world from ubuntu container!
You can also use the web GUI to build containers remotely. First, go to https://cloud.sylabs.io/builder (make sure you are signed in). Then you can copy and paste, upload, or type your definition file. When you are finished, click build. Then you can download the container with the URL.