Docker Container for WRF

John Exby and Kate Fossell provided a method to encapsulate the WRF modeling system with a container.

From their work, we have modified the Dockerfiles to work with new code, and a couple of separate use cases. The Dockerfiles include

• Source code for WRF and WPS, from github
• External libraries required to build WRF and WPS
• Construct enough of an OS to have traditional user-level Linux capabilities
• Ability to use the GNU compiler for compilation
• OpenMPI is used for distributed memory processing
• Post-processing is available, via PDF fields, from NCL
• The static data for geogrid is available (low resolution only)
• Two Dockerfiles to allow a tutorial walk-through, or regression testing
• The tutorial case has namelists and Grib data to run end-to-end
• The regression case has metgrid output and all of the NML files from the regression suite

There is a README for each of the two Dockerfiles: tutorial and regtest. Make sure that you copy the correct Dockerfile. Either:

ln -sf Dockerfile_tutorial Dockerfile

or

ln -sf Dockerfile_regtest Dockerfile

Tutorial

The README_tutorial.md has step-by-step instructions to run the entire WRF system, from geogrid through generating PDF files with model output. We go "into" the container for the tutorial case. This is a mechanical process of the required process to churn through the modeling system parts.

docker   build   -t   wrf_tutorial  .
mkdir OUTPUT
docker   run   -it   --name   teachme   -v   `pwd`/OUTPUT:/wrf/wrfoutput   wrf_tutorial   /bin/tcsh

Regtest

The purpose of the regression test is to allow a specifically built container to conduct a number of tests. We stay outside of the container for the regression test case. Because of the way that we started this container, we need to explicitly "stop" it after we are finished.

docker   build   -t   wrf_regtest  .
docker   run   -d -t   --name   test_001   wrf_regtest   /bin/tcsh
docker   exec  test_001   ./script.csh   BUILD   CLEAN   34   1   em_real -d
docker   exec  test_001   ./script.csh   RUN   em_real   34   em_real 03
docker   stop  test_001

For regression testing, the above two docker exec commands should each have a exit status of 0. Additionally, in the README_regtest.md file, there is explicit information for each test that may be conducted for the regression suite.

Hutch added this line for real this time