Octave is supplied from https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/index. There are no direct support at LRZ, or guaranties that this software works without issues. Still, users can try to employ it, but must install it by themselves.

The following procedure might be successful.

Setup Conda Framework

Login to the LRZ via SSH.

lrz> module load anaconda3    # will setup the conda framework (check for other module names)
lrz> conda init bash
lrz> source .bashrc           # or, place the conda initialization section into another file, and source it when needed

This needs to be done just once. Afterwards, it suffices to just re-login. The conda framework is then already loaded.

Installation of Octave

(base) lrz> conda create -n octave octave

This creates a conda environment octave, and installs the octave package (together with its dependencies). This might take quite a while. Please, be patient!

Possibly, if this fails, you must first add the conda-forge channel.

On SuperMUC-NG, downloads must be redirected through SSH reverse tunnels and a http proxy (described elsewhere in the LRZ documentation), or accomplished via offline repositories copied to the SuperMUC-NG location.

Usage of Octave

At its simplest, just activate the conda environment, and start octave.

(base) lrz> conda activate octave
(octave) lrz> octave
octave: X11 DISPLAY environment variable not set
octave: disabling GUI features
GNU Octave, version 6.3.0
Copyright (C) 2021 The Octave Project Developers.
This is free software; see the source code for copying conditions.
There is ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  For details, type 'warranty'.

Octave was configured for "x86_64-conda-linux-gnu".

Additional information about Octave is available at https://www.octave.org.

Please contribute if you find this software useful.
For more information, visit https://www.octave.org/get-involved.html

Read https://www.octave.org/bugs.html to learn how to submit bug reports.
For information about changes from previous versions, type 'news'.

octave:1>

If a GUI is required, either login with SSH X forwarding, or consider the usage of VNC. Then start octave via

(octave) lrz> octave --gui

General Considerations on LRZ HPC systems

In principle, setting a conda environment and starting octave should also work on compute nodes. Please, don't use the login nodes for intensive workloads or memory consuming tasks. Please use the interactive Slurm queues via salloc, or submit batch jobs via sbatch!

Documentation, Help, and Troubleshooting

Consult first https://www.gnu.org/software/octave/support, and the octave user community when spotting problems or questions. Figure out, if the issues are due to octave itself. Only if this can be excluded, and LRZ system issues might cause the observed trouble, please contact the LRZ ServiceDesk.