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# Installation Tutorial (part 1: the Server)

Note

If you haven’t already, we strongly suggest you begin by reading the bird’s eye view of FireWorks.

This tutorial will guide you through FireWorks installation on the central server. You will:

- Install the FireWorks codebase
- Get a central MongoDB server up and running
- Add a simple workflow to the central database
- Run that workflow in a few modes
- Get a flavor of the Python API

The purpose of this tutorial is to get you set up as quickly as possible; it isn’t intended to demonstrate the features of FireWorks or explain things in great detail. This tutorial can be safely completed from the command line, and requires no programming.

Important

If you are having trouble with this tutorial, please post a message on the FireWorks Github page.

## Set up the central server (FireServer)

The FireWorks central server (FireServer) hosts the FireWorks database. For production, you should choose a central server that has a fixed IP address/hostname so that you can connect to it from other machines reliably. For initially testing the installation, it should be OK to use a laptop or workstation with a dynamic IP. To set up a FireServer:

1. Follow the instructions listed at Basic FireWorks Installation.

2. Install MongoDB on the server.

3. Start MongoDB:

       mongod &

You are now ready to start playing with FireWorks!

Note

If MongoDB is outputting a lot of text, you might want to start it in a dedicated Terminal window or use the `--quiet` option. In addition, if you are running it on a shared machine, make sure that the `--dbpath` variable is set to a directory that you can access.

### Reset the FireServer

1. Navigate to the FireWorks installation tutorial directory:

       cd <INSTALL_DIR>/fw_tutorials/installation

   where <INSTALL_DIR> is your FireWorks installation directory.

2. Reset the FireWorks database (the LaunchPad):

       lpad reset <TODAY'S DATE>

   where <TODAY’S DATE> is formatted like ‘2012-01-31’ (this serves as a safeguard to accidentally overwriting an existing database). You should receive confirmation that the LaunchPad was reset.

Note

If you are already curious about the various options that the LaunchPad offers, you can type `lpad -h`. The `-h` help option is available for all of the scripts in FireWorks.

### Add a FireWork to the FireServer database

A FireWork contains a list of computing tasks (FireTasks) to be performed. For this tutorial, we will use a FireWork that consists of only a single step. We’ll tackle more complex workflows in other tutorials. Our workflow consisting of one FireWork and one FireTask thus looks like this:

1. Staying in the tutorial directory, run the following command:

       lpad add fw_test.yaml

   Note

   You can look inside the file `fw_test.yaml` with a text editor if you’d like; we’ll explain its components shortly. You could also define this file in JSON format, but we’ll stick to YAML as it looks cleaner to those unfamiliar with JSON.

2. You should have received confirmation that the FireWork got added. You can query the database for this FireWork as follows:

       lpad get_fws -i 1 -d all

   This prints out all details of the FireWork with `fw_id` = 1 (the first FireWork entered into the database):

       {
           "fw_id": 1,
           "state": "READY",
           "name": "Unnamed FW",
           "created_on": "2013-06-10T00:06:48.645253",
           "spec": {
               "_tasks": [
                   {
                       "_fw_name": "Script Task",
                       "script": "echo \"howdy, your job launched successfully!\" >> howdy.txt"
                   }
               ]
           }
       }

3. Some of the FireWork is straightforward, but a few sections deserve further explanation:

- The spec of the FireWork contains all the information about what job to run and the parameters needed to run it.
- Within the spec, the _tasks section tells you what jobs will run. The `Script Task` is a particular type of task that runs commands through the shell. Other sections of the spec can be also be defined, but for now we’ll stick to just _tasks. Later on, we’ll describe how to run multiple _tasks or customized _tasks.
- This FireWork runs the script `echo "howdy, your job launched successfully!" >> howdy.txt"`, which prints text to a file named `howdy.txt`.
- The state of READY means the FireWork is ready to be run.
- The name is an optional field that we can set to help query for FireWorks later on. In this case, we did not specify one so a default name was used.

You have now stored a FireWork in the LaunchPad, and it’s ready to run!

Note

The ScriptTask provides more options than what’s presented here; more details on using the `ScriptTask` will be presented in future tutorials.

Note

The `lpad get_fws` command is a powerful way to search for FireWorks in the database. For details on its usage, see Querying FireWorks and Workflows

## Launch a Rocket on the FireServer

A Rocket fetches a FireWork from the LaunchPad and runs it. A Rocket might be run on a separate machine (FireWorker) or through a queuing system. For now, we will run the Rocket on the FireServer itself and without a queue.

1. We can launch Rockets using the Rocket Launcher. Execute the following command (once):

       rlaunch singleshot

   The Rocket fetches an available FireWork from the FireServer and runs it.

2. Verify that the desired task ran:

       cat howdy.txt

   You should see the text: `howdy, your job launched successfully!`

Note

In addition to `howdy.txt`, you should also see a file called `FW.json`. This contains a JSON representation of the FireWork that the Rocket ran and can be useful later for tracking down a launch or debugging.

1. Check the status of your FireWork:

       lpad get_fws -i 1 -d all

   You will now see lots of information about your Rocket launch, such as the time and directory of the launch. A lot of it is probably unclear, but you should notice that the state of the FireWork is now `COMPLETED`.

2. Try launching another rocket (you should get an error):

       rlaunch singleshot

   The error `No FireWorks are ready to run and match query!` indicates that the Rocket tried to fetch a FireWork from the database, but none could be found. Indeed, we had previously run the only FireWork that was in the database.

## Launch many Rockets (rapidfire mode)

If you just want to run many jobs on the central server itself, the simplest way is to run the Rocket Launcher in “rapidfire mode”. Let’s try this feature:

1. Staying in the same directory, clean up your output files:

       rm FW.json howdy.txt

2. Let’s add 3 identical FireWorks:

       lpad add fw_test.yaml
       lpad add fw_test.yaml
       lpad add fw_test.yaml

3. Confirm that the three FireWorks got added to the database, in addition to the one from before (4 total):

       lpad get_fws -d less

4. We could also just get the `fw_id` of jobs that are ready to run (our 3 new FireWorks):

       lpad get_fws -s READY -d less

5. Let’s run launch Rockets in “rapidfire” mode, which will keep repeating until we run out of FireWorks to run:

       rlaunch rapidfire

6. You should see three directories starting with the tag `launcher_`. Inside each of these directories, you’ll find the results of one of your FireWorks (a file named `howdy.txt`):

       cat launch*/howdy.txt

## Running FireWorks automatically

We can set our Rocket Launcher to continuously look for new FireWorks to run. Let’s try this feature.

1. Staying in the same directory, clean up your previous output files:

       rm -r launcher_*

2. Start the Rocket Launcher so that it looks for new FireWorks every 10 seconds:

       rlaunch rapidfire --nlaunches infinite --sleep 10

3. In a new terminal window, navigate back to your working directory containing `fw_test.yaml`. Let’s insert two FireWorks:

       lpad add fw_test.yaml
       lpad add fw_test.yaml

4. After a few seconds, the Rocket Launcher should have picked up the new jobs and run them. Confirm this is the case:

       cat launch*/howdy.txt

   You should see two outputs, one for each FireWork we inserted.

5. You can continue adding FireWorks as desired; the Rocket Launcher will run them automatically and create a new directory for each job. When you are finished, you can exit out of the Rocket Launcher terminal window and clean up your working directory.

6. As with all FireWorks scripts, you can run the built-in help for more information:

       rlaunch -h
       rlaunch singleshot -h
       rlaunch rapidfire -h

## What just happened?

It’s important to understand that when you add a FireWork to the LaunchPad using the `lpad` script, the job just sits in the database and waits. The LaunchPad does not submit jobs to a computing resource when a new FireWork is added to the LaunchPad. Rather, a computing resource must request a computing task by running the Rocket Launcher. By running the Rocket Launcher from different locations, you can have different computing resources run your jobs. Using rapidfire mode is a convenient way of requesting multiple jobs using a single command.

## Python Examples (optional)

While it’s possible to work operate FireWorks using YAML or JSON files, a much cleaner mode of operation is to use Python scripts. For example, here is a runnable script that creates our LaunchPad, defines our test Workflow, and runs it:

    from fireworks.core.firework import FireWork
    from fireworks.core.fworker import FWorker
    from fireworks.core.launchpad import LaunchPad
    from fireworks.core.rocket_launcher import launch_rocket
    from fireworks.user_objects.firetasks.script_task import ScriptTask

    # set up the LaunchPad and reset it
    launchpad = LaunchPad()
    launchpad.reset('', require_password=False)

    # create the FireWork consisting of a single task
    firetask = ScriptTask.from_str('echo "howdy, your job launched successfully!"')
    firework = FireWork(firetask)

    # store workflow and launch it locally
    launchpad.add_wf(firework)
    launch_rocket(launchpad, FWorker())

Note

You must have MongoDB running locally on port 27017 for the above example to work. Otherwise, see below.

Here a few modifications that you might already find useful.

Change the MongoDB configuration:

    launchpad = LaunchPad(host="myhost", port=12345, \
    name="fireworks_testing_db", username="my_user", \
    password="my_pass")

Run in rapid-fire mode:

    from fireworks.core.rocket_launcher import rapidfire
    rapidfire(launchpad, FWorker())  # use this line instead of launch_rocket()

Only output warnings and above:

    launchpad = LaunchPad(strm_lvl='WARNING')
    # <code omitted>
    launch_rocket(launchpad, FWorker(), strm_lvl='WARNING')

Write out the Workflow to a flat file, or load a FireWork object from a file:

    fw_yaml = firework.to_file("my_firework.yaml")
    fw = firework.from_file("my_firework.yaml")
    print fw

    fw_json = firework.to_file("my_firework.json")
    fw = firework.from_file("my_firework.json")
    print fw

Note

The to_file() and from_file() functions are available for many FireWork objects, including the LaunchPad and Workflows (which are covered in a later tutorial). Technically, any class in FireWorks that subclasses FWSerializable will allow serialization/deserialization to files if desired.

Note

FireWorks automatically detects what type of format you’re writing and reading from based on the extension. Both JSON and YAML are fully supported. Of course, if you’re using Python, there may not be any need to use files at all!

The code above generally does not use a lot of the optional arguments to keep the examples looking clean and sharp. You might experiment with some of the options - for example, to set up logging when initializing the LaunchPad or control the parameters of rapid-fire mode. You can see the additional arguments by browsing the modules documentation.

## Next steps

At this point, you’ve successfully stored a simple job in a database and run it later on command. You even executed multiple jobs with a single command: `rlaunch rapidfire`, and looked for new jobs automatically using the infinite Rocket Launcher. This should give a basic feeling of how you can automate many jobs using FireWorks.

Your next step depends on your application. If you want to stick with our simple script and automate it on at least one worker node, forge on to the next tutorial in the series: Installation Tutorial (part 2: the Worker). This is the path we recommend for most users, except in the simplest of circumstances in which you only want to run jobs on the FireServer itself.

If you are only running on the FireServer, you can skip ahead to defining jobs using FireTasks.

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