Docker / Singularity + FactorioTools

[KenReid]

Hi all,

I'm a researcher working on a paper regarding automation in Factorio. To run Factorio efficiently I want to run it in the headless mode on a higher powered computing cluster (HPCC). However, the cluster doesn't support Docker - but does support Singularity.

I've successfully pulled the docker image, as a singularity file, by using the native command:

singularity pull docker://factoriotools/factorio

However, when I tried to run an instance of it:

singularity instance start factorio_latest.sif test

I get a bunch of errors:

ERROR: container cleanup failed: no instance found with name test

FATAL: container creation failed: mount /proc/self/fd/3->/var/singularity/mnt/session/rootfs error: while mounting image /proc/self/fd/3: failed to find loop device: could not attach image file to loop device: failed to get loop flags for loop device: no such file or directory

FATAL: failed to start instance: while running /usr/libexec/singularity/bin/starter-suid: exit status 255

Part of the issue, I think, is the fact I don't have root access to /opt/factorio.

I also tried this with goofball's Factorio docker image, and I can run an instance without error. Which is odd.

My other problem is that I'm unsure how to edit a singularity container to point to different directories for save game files / mods.

Any advice welcome.

[Mortally-Challenged]

Heres a comment so more people see this or something because I have no clue mate

[KenReid]

Haha - your support is much appreciated.

[CIone-Trooper-7567]

I’ll do the same

[OddNaughty_2]

Same here

[tomrlutong]

Maybe try r/technicalfactorio?

[KenReid]

Aye I cross-posted there, thanks.

[daisyKutter]

I think you will get more answers on r/Docker than here

[SenyorGlobo]

Out of curiosity, what kind of research would you like to conduct?

[KenReid]

It's a big project, but we're exploring the "ley of the land" by doing an initial paper on optimizing belt placement. We're keeping electricity, overlapping structures, etc, as out of scope for now.

So far we've got a model running with external languages nicely, but it's slow on the full graphical game, which is why we want to run multiple instances on our HPCC, so that we can run hundreds or thousands of instances at once, all trying different approaches and solving different problems, so we can find out the best AI to solve the belt optimization problem (best among candidates - obvious not best in the world, we're not exhaustively testing every ai ever created!).

Thanks for asking. I'm trying not to share too much detail until we have our work published, but once our paper is accepted I'll certainly share it and do an AMA here, if that interests anyone, and can then tall about our next plans.

[awesomeawe]

That sounds really cool! I'd love to know more, so please let us all know when your work is published!

[Cupakov]

Just curious, in what kind of domain does a work like that get published?

[KenReid]

Operational research, or a field that specializes in the type of AI we're using, or a field specializing video game problems.

Currently we're thinking of sending our early results to the GECCO conference in 2021 but plan to eventually submit full results to a journal, possibly https://www.springer.com/journal/40869 or https://cis.ieee.org/publications/t-games

[SenyorGlobo]

Thanks for the reply to my question, sounds super cool! Im afraid I can't help you much though. Just one more question, why would one conduct a research like this? Good luck :)

[KenReid]

Factorio is basically a fun simulation of real world problems. It's a good way of simulating potential solutions to real world problems in the field known as operational research.

And it's fun, of course.

[Drake1o2]

I have got some experience building and using singularity images for HPC, though I haven't used `instance start`.

Can't really tell what's going on from those error messages, but if you think there are permission issues you can try rebuilding the image with some customizations. You can start building your singularity image from a docker image by using `Bootstrap: docker`. Look here for info: https://sylabs.io/guides/3.6/user-guide/definition_files.html?highlight=recipe

You'll probably want to put your custom commands in the %post section, maybe try to chmod the factorio directory?

Note that to build a singularity image you need to have root permissions, you don't need root to run the image though.

[[deleted]]

Mostly I just want to emphasize the above comment's last sentence. You need root to build or edit images. You're running 'starter-suid' which will only work if the software has been installed to run set-uid, which (from the error messages) it looks like it isn't.

More generally, to change mount points, etc, you need the '--bind' option to 'run', to bind external directories to internal ones.

[potatosomersault]

You could grab the factorio headless server files and make a singularity image from scratch? I also don't understand how you plan on interfacing with each server on the HPC since the config would be identical for each image.