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How to install Apptainer ?

This tutorial summarizes how to install the container management software Apptainer. It is largely based on official installation instructions, and one should read these more exhaustive ressources for more details.

Apptainer works on any modern Linux distribution ; however, it is not compatible with Windows and MacOS host kernels and does not run natively on those. It is recommended to use virtualization solutions or a Docker container in such cases, which will not be covered in this topic : see more information here.

Finally, this tutorial focuses on currently supported versions: if you are using a Linux distribution version that is no longer supported (for example, CentOS 7 or Ubuntu 18.04) and you encounter a difficult-to-resolve error, do not hesitate to contact us!

Install Ubuntu packages

One liner command

You can run the following commands to directly install Ubuntu packages :

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:apptainer/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y apptainer

Step-by-step detail

To install pre-built Ubuntu packages for amd64 and arm64 architectures, one needs to access Apptainer’s personal package archive (PPA).

First, run this to ensure access to the add-apt-repository command :

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y software-properties-common # Mandatory to be able to run next command
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:apptainer/ppa

Then, finish the installation using :

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y apptainer

Install Debian packages

One liner command

You can run the following commands to directly install Debian packages :

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y wget
cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/releases/download/v1.2.5/apptainer_1.2.5_amd64.deb
sudo apt install -y ./apptainer_1.2.5_amd64.deb

Step-by-step detail

To install pre-built Debian packages only for amd64 architectures, one needs to access Apptainer’s GitHub repository using wget :

sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y wget

Once wget is available, the .deb package can be downloaded and installed locally :

cd /tmp
wget https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/releases/download/v1.2.5/apptainer_1.2.5_amd64.deb
sudo apt install -y ./apptainer_1.2.5_amd64.deb

Installation for RedHat, Fedora, CentOS

RPM packages from GitHub

With each new version release, a RPM (RedHat Package Manager) package is available on GitHub :

sudo yum install -y https://github.com/apptainer/apptainer/releases/download/v1.2.5/apptainer-1.2.5-1.x86_64.rpm

RPM packages from EPEL or Fedora

RPM packages are also available through EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux). Using RedHat, one first has to gain access to EPEL repositories :

sudo yum install -y epel-release

From here, use the following to install the package :

sudo yum install -y apptainer

Install without superuser privileges

For non-privileged users, a scripts is made available to install pre-built binaries together with several utilitaries mandatory to run Apptainer. The script works for Red Hat Enterprise Linux-derived systems, and also for Fedora, SUSE/OpenSUSE, Debian, and Ubuntu. It is however required to have access to curl rpm2cpio and cpio through the $PATH environment variable).

One can run the script using :

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apptainer/apptainer/main/tools/install-unprivileged.sh | \
    bash -s - install-dir

Please note the global apptainer command will not be available with this installation, and it is required to call the executable using install-dir/bin/apptainer. We suggest to create an apptainer alias pointing to this executable in ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_aliases.

Install on Windows/MacOS

For Windows user, a dedicated documentation page can be found here.

For Mac users, it is recommended to use Lima via Homebrew on the Apptainer documentation.