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 :
  1. To know you: add your promotor/boss in cc, and present yourself shortly (name, university, Physics group/experiment). Please do so preferrably from your preferred contact email, as it is the one we will keep to contact you.
  2. 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).
  3. 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.

4. [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