FAQ and common issues

FAQ

Which operating systems are supported?

• Linux
  • Current OS of lxplus and HTCondor (RHEL9 at the time of writing)
  • Current Ubuntu LTS on a best effort basis
  • Whatever distribution @olantwin is using
• Other distributions or OS's might be supported if there is enough interest.

Common issues

aliBuild is trying to build packages that should be taken from the system/CVMFS

On some platforms (e.g. SLC9), aliBuild does not use any packagres from the system. To make sure system packages can be used where possible, pass the --always-prefer-system flag.

Scary git message about loading an unsafe directory

This issue should be solved as of aliBuild 1.17.3

This is a recent-ish change in git you might have to tell git to treat shipdist as a safe directory the first time you set up the SHiP environment:

git config --global --add safe.directory /cvmfs/ship.cern.ch/24.01/shipdist

Cannot find SCM directory in $SHIPDIST

Above-mentioned git security feature also crashes alibuild without a useful error message.

The solution is again to add a security exception for $SHIPDIST:

git config --global --add safe.directory /cvmfs/ship.cern.ch/24.01/shipdist

Interference due to the LHCb environment being loaded

lbenv is known to break the current SHiP software stack. Please configure lbenv to not load automatically, in order to avoid this issue. With correct configuration, LHCb and SHiP software can happily coexist within the same computing account.