The Flight User Suite provides tooling to help users make the most of their HPC environments.
- Download the latest release from the releases page.
- Copy the release tarball to the target system.
- Untar the release to
/: it will install Flight User Suite to/opt/flightalong with a handful of configuration files outside of/opt/flight. You can list the contents of the tarball to see those files.
Once Flight User Suite has been installed, you can enable the hooks and tooling that you wish to make available.
Upgrading is not supported, but is possible by unpacking a newer release
over the top of an existing installation. Configuration of hooks and tools may
be lost in this process and /etc/xdg/flight.config will be overwritten.
Hooks run code in response to events on the system. There are two types of hooks available: "login" hooks which are automatically run when a user creates a new login shell, and "activation" hooks that are run when the Flight environment is activated.
The following example shows how to list available hooks, enable a hook, and list enabled hooks.
$ sudo /opt/flight/bin/flight hooks list
┌────────────┬────────────────────────┬─────────────┐
│ Event │ Name │ Enabled │
├────────────┼────────────────────────┼─────────────┤
│ login │ welcome │ ❌ Disabled │
│ activation │ ssh-keypair-generation │ ❌ Disabled │
└────────────┴────────────────────────┴─────────────┘
$ sudo /opt/flight/bin/flight hooks enable login welcome
Enabled welcome hook
$ sudo /opt/flight/bin/flight hooks list --enabled
┌───────┬─────────┬─────────────┐
│ Event │ Name │ Enabled │
├───────┼─────────┼─────────────┤
│ login │ welcome │ ✅ Enabled │
└───────┴─────────┴─────────────┘
$ sudo /opt/flight/bin/flight hooks enable activation ssh-keypair-generation
Enabled ssh-keypair-generation hook
$ sudo /opt/flight/bin/flight hooks list
┌────────────┬────────────────────────┬─────────────┐
│ Event │ Name │ Enabled │
├────────────┼────────────────────────┼─────────────┤
│ login │ welcome │ ✅ Enabled │
│ activation │ ssh-keypair-generation │ ✅ Enabled │
└────────────┴────────────────────────┴─────────────┘See flight hooks --help for more details.
Tools are commands run by users of the Flight User Suite. Flight User Suite includes a number of different tools, most of which are disabled by default and can be enabled by the superuser.
The following example shows how to list available tools, enable a tool, and list
enabled tools. (Note that flight howto is normally enabled by default.)
$ sudo /opt/flight/bin/flight tools list
┌─────────┬─────────────┐
│ Name │ Enabled │
├─────────┼─────────────┤
│ desktop │ ❌ Disabled │
│ howto │ ✅ Enabled │
└─────────┴─────────────┘
$ sudo /opt/flight/bin/flight tools enable desktop
Enabled flight desktop tool
$ sudo /opt/flight/bin/flight tools list --enabled
┌─────────┬─────────────┐
│ Name │ Enabled │
├─────────┼─────────────┤
│ desktop │ ✅ Enabled │
│ howto │ ✅ Enabled │
└─────────┴─────────────┘Running flight-start will activate the Flight User Suite environment. The
output of this command will depend on which hooks have been configured.
With the Flight environment active, the user prompt will change and the flight
command will become available for both root and non-root users.
Tools can be run with flight <toolname>, for example:
$ flight howto --help
NAME:
flight howto - View user guides for your HPC environment
USAGE:
flight howto [global options] [command [command options]]
DESCRIPTION:
View user guides for your HPC environment
COMMANDS:
list, l, ls List available user guides
show, s Open a user guide for viewing in the terminal
help, h Shows a list of commands or help for one command
GLOBAL OPTIONS:
--help, -h show help
COPYRIGHT:
(c) 2026 Stephen F Norledge & Alces Software Ltd & Concertim Ltd.The output of flight --help will list all enabled tools.
From an active Flight environment, running flight-stop will deactivate the
Flight User Suite and return the environment to its original settings.
When a new login shell is created, the /etc/profile.d/zz-flight-starter.sh
file will be sourced and the login hooks run. The following shows the output
from doing so when the welcome login hook is enabled.
-[ Flight ]-
Welcome to your cluster, based on Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS.
This cluster provides an OpenFlight HPC environment.
'flight-start' - activate Flight User Suite nowOnce /etc/profile.d/zz-flight-starter.sh has been sourced, the Flight
environment can be activated by running flight-start. The following example
shows the output when the ssh-keypair-generation activation hook is enabled.
$ flight-start
__ _ _ _ _ ==>
==> / _| (_) | | | | ==>
==> ___ _ __ ___ _ __ | |_| |_ __ _| |__ | |_ ==>
==> / _ \ | '_ \ / _ \| '_ \ | _| | |/ _` | '_ \| __| ==>
==> | (_) || |_) || __/| | | || | | | | (_| | | | | |_ ==>
==> \___/ | .__/ \___||_| |_||_| |_|_|\__, |_| |_|\__| ==>
==> |_| __/ | ==>
==> Welcome to your cluster |___/ ==>
==> Flight User Suite v0.0.1
==> Based on Ubuntu 22.04.5 LTS
Generating SSH keypair: OK
Authorizing key: OK
Your SSH config has been modified to use the generated identity file.
Please review the config if you experience issues with SSH.
SSH Config: /home/ben/.ssh/config
Identity File: /home/ben/.ssh/id_flightcluster
Flight environment is now active.
Eclipse Public License 2.0, see LICENSE.txt for details.
Copyright (C) 2026 Stephen F Norledge & Alces Software Ltd & Concertim Ltd.
This program and the accompanying materials are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License 2.0 which is available at https://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-2.0, or alternative license terms made available by Alces Software Ltd - please direct inquiries about licensing to licensing@alces-software.com.
Flight User Suite is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, ANY WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the Eclipse Public License 2.0 for more details.