SuperMUC-NG does not allow for outgoing internet connections and therefore conda does not work out of the box (same for pip or R-CRAN).

There is, however, a way to transfer conda environments from your local machine or the SuperMUC-Cloud to the SuperMUC File system easily:

Method 1:

Using conda pack:

Step 1: On the machine with internet connection (local linux workstation or SuperMUC-Cloud instance)

• Install conda, either
  • on your local machine (linux x86_64) or
  • in a VM on the SuperMUC-Cloud (see: Compute Cloud how to get a VM)
• Install all the packages that you want into a new environment (e.g. my_env)
• install the conda-pack package

  $ conda install conda-pack

• pack environment my_env into my_env.tar.gz
  $ conda pack -n my_env

• then copy the tar file to SuperMUC-NG:
  $ scp my_env.tar.gz skx.supermuc.lrz.de:~

Step 2: On SuperMUC-NG (no internet connection to outside)

• Unpack environment into directory my_env
  $ mkdir -p my_env
$ tar -xzf my_env.tar.gz -C my_en

• Activate the environment:
  $ source my_env/bin/activate
  This adds my_env/bin to your path.

• When using the environment for the first time, update the executable paths and prefixes with the following command:

  (my_env)$ conda-unpack
• Run python in the environment
  (my_env)$ python

• Deactivate the environment to remove it from your path
  (my_env)$ source my_env/bin/deactivate
  
  If later on you need additional packages you have to go back to step 1

Method 2

Alternative - via local HTTP proxy and reverse SSH tunnels:

There is a chance to download conda packages directly to the NG filesystem via a local HTTP proxy, and reverse SSH tunnels. A decription is to be found here: https://medium.com/@brianray_7981/securely-install-jupyter-python-without-internet-connection-in-4-easy-steps-7d6907fe022e

An adaptation is to use the Intel Python installations on the SuperMUC-NG login nodes (e.g. "module load python/3.5_intel", and then "conda create -p $WORK_<project ID>/ic35/envs/test --clone root --offline" (if you want to install it into your WORK-directory)). A session that was tested under a Linux PC (local):