First access to t2b

There are a few steps to gain access to the T2:

• First thing to know: our contact mail is grid_admin AT listserv.vub.ac.be . Please always send mails to this list and not to personnal emails, this way everyone here can respond and keep up-to-date with problems.

Getting access

• Now, to get access to our T2, send us a mail with the following (everything is mandatory):
  1. You need to add your promotor/boss in cc
  2. Use your preferred contact email, as it is the one we will keep to contact you
  3. Present yourself shortly, with AT LEAST those informations:

• Full Name
• University
• research group/experiment

4. Add to this email the login you want to use. If you have a CERN account, it needs to be the same (even if said account is not enabled anymore).

5. Finally, copy-paste the content of your PUBLIC ssh key in the mail, in order to have access to our User Interfaces (UIs, or often called the mX machines). To create a pair of ssh keys if you don't have one already, do the following:

in a shell type:
>  ssh-keygen
and follow the instructions. The defaults suggested are fine. Just choose a password.

this will create 2 files in the following directory: $HOME/.ssh
The files are:
  id_rsa
  id_rsa.pub

You need to send us the content of id_rsa.pub, which is your public key. The other is your private key and should never be shared.
Note that if you already have one somewhere else, copying both id_rsa[.pub] files on your computer is fine too.

6. [OPTIONAL] If you already have a certificate, please add your DN to the mail. The DN is given by the content of "Identity" when issuing the command voms-proxy-info.

• [IMPORTANT] You need to register to the t2b user mailing-list. This is where we make important announcements to our users.
  1. Go to the request page
  2. search for the list beginning with belgian-t2-users
  3. then hit the button subscribe
  4. If any of this fails, ask someone to contact the mailinglist admins (or ask them to send a mail to this list with your request)

Next Steps

• If you need a grid certificate, follow this twiki page

 ** IMPORTANT: you need a grid certificate to be able to write to our mass storage system.

• Now that you have access to our T2, read the following:
  1. Presentation of our cluster : please have a careful look at this page !
  2. Local job submission

  ... everything else you might need on the wiki front page