DEB2APPTAINER(1)

okay bestie, you found the deb2apptainer(1) manual page 💅 and honestly? it's giving "tiny script, huge main character energy." sit down, grab a boba, we're building containers out of Debian packages together 🫶

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🌸 NAME 🌸

deb2apptainer — bestie, this builds a Singularity/Apptainer image with the Debian packages you ask for. that's the whole vibe. 💖

(and yes, there's a twin: it also answers to deb2singularity, no cap.)

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

deb2apptainer [-hB][-c CMD] [-f FROM][-n NAME] [-o DIR][-p PRE_SCRIPT]
[-s POST_SCRIPT] packages
deb2singularity [-hB][-c CMD] [-f FROM][-n NAME] [-o DIR][-p PRE_SCRIPT]
[-s POST_SCRIPT] packages

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so like, deb2apptainer is a simple script — not a whole framework, not a whole vibe crisis — it takes a list of Debian packages as input and automatically generates a Singularity/Apptainer container that has all of them inside. literally just hand it the packages and it does the thing. 💅

on top of that, it also generates a set of freedesktop.org desktop launchers, based on the .desktop and icon files it finds inside those packages. and then — because it's an overachiever — it also makes a desktop launcher whose whole job is to start the container in a Terminal. iconic behavior, honestly. 👑

this tool is the moment for deploying applications as containers, and it also eats for testing Debian packages in a sandbox. both? both. periodt.

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -B — do NOT build the image (default is to build, bestie). a build script gets generated in the DIR target directory instead. 🎀
• -c EXEC — the command to run in the container (defaults to /bin/bash).
• -f FROM — the distribution to be used (defaults to debian:stable).
• -h — show this help 🙈
• -n NAME — name of the image (default is built from the package list, so it names itself, slay).
• -o DIR — use the given directory DIR for the build (default is in /tmp).
• -p PRE_SCRIPT — execute the given script PRE_SCRIPT before packages install.
• -s POST_SCRIPT — execute the given script POST_SCRIPT after packages install.
• packages — the package list can be any Debian package, as well as local .deb files. yes, locals count too 💖

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🎀 FILES 🎀

here's what shows up in your build directory, bestie:

• DIR/README
• DIR/image.def
• DIR/image.sif
• DIR/launchers/
• DIR/icons/
• DIR/build
• DIR/start

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🌈 NOTES 🌈

okay so, obviously — you need apptainer installed. no apptainer, no container, i don't make the rules. 😭

you can get the Debian package right here: https://apptainer.org/docs/admin/main/installation.html#install-debian-packages

and these are the usual commands people use to handle Apptainer/Singularity containers — memorise them, iykyk:

• build — apptainer build image.sif
• run — apptainer run image.sif, and apptainer run --nv image.sif for the version with NVIDIA GPU pass-through 🔥
• info — apptainer inspect image.sif
• header — apptainer sif header image.sif
• data — apptainer sif list image.sif

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⭐ EXAMPLES ⭐

🌸 make a container with x11-apps in /tmp/xeyes, then launch xeyes

• deb2apptainer -o /tmp/xeyes x11-apps
• /tmp/xeyes/start xeyes

a Desktop launcher is created as /tmp/xeyes/launchers/x11-apps-terminal.desktop 💖

🌸 make a container with x11-apps and meshlab

deb2apptainer x11-apps meshlab

🌸 make a container and make sure the software channels are active

• ```text echo “sed -i `s/main/main contrib non-free/g' /etc/apt/sources.list” > pre.sh

- ```text
deb2apptainer -p pre.sh x11-apps

🌸 make a container based on a specific Debian version, and make use of the GPU

• ```text echo “echo `deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib non-free' >> /etc/apt/sources.list” > pre-script.sh

- ```text
deb2apptainer -n pyhst2 -f debian:bullseye -p pre-script.sh -o /tmp/apptainer-pyhst2/ python3-pyhst2-cuda nvidia-smi nvidia-cuda-toolkit

• ```text apptainer run --nv /tmp/apptainer-pyhst2/pyhst2.sif nvidia-smi

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# 👑 AUTHORS 👑

Emmanuel Farhi (`emmanuel.farhi@synchrotron-soleil.fr`)

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# 🧚 SEE ALSO 🧚

`deb2docker(1)`, `distrobox-create(1)`, `distrobox-enter(1)`, `docker(1)`, `apptainer(1)`

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# 💜 AUTHORS 💜

Emmanuel Farhi.

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> and that's the whole page, bestie 🫶 go forth and containerize responsibly.

<rainbow>**February 2024**</rainbow> — that's the date on this one, and it lives in section **DEB2APPTAINER(1)**. mwah 💋 ✨🌸💅