On Jul 9, 2017, at 18:32 , Bruce Ferrell wrote:

> On 07/09/2017 05:51 AM, Tru Huynh wrote:
>> On Sun, Jul 09, 2017 at 12:03:02AM -0700, Bruce Ferrell wrote:
>>> OK, before the flames start I KNOW it's not normal.
>>> 
>>> Has anyone have a method to upgrade glibc beyond 2.12?
>> I would suggest trying singularity (http://singularity.lbl.gov)
>> and put your application of choice in a single container
>> (http://singularity.lbl.gov/quickstart).
> 
> Thanks Tru, but looking at this, I'm basically spinning up a Centos/RHEL/SciLin7 "container".

Singularity is not limited to those OSs. When it comes to using recent versions of system libraries, others may be a better choice.

>  If I'm going that route, spinning up a VM is a WHOLE lot faster...

Er, no... creating an image is faster than installing a VM, starting it is orders of magnitude faster, and on top you dont' have to configure and maintain a full system. In particular, you don't have to run systemd even if you choose EL7 or Ubuntu 16.04 as the container runtime.

> And if I have to go VM to do this, I may as well do a "from scratch" (Gentoo FS etc) in the VM.
> 
> I have yet to see a good use case for containers... Unless you need a lot of them.  Most people don't.

Well yours is a very good use case for a Singularity container. Give it a serious try, and I'm pretty sure you won't look back to any solution you have in mind now.