From ATLAS-TRIUMF

[edit] Obtaining a GRID Certificate

Assuming that you are at a Canadian institute which is a member of WestGrid, you can probably do what I did:

• Apply for a WestGrid account (you will register a login id and password at this point). You should say that you are joining the existing ATLAS project (look it up in the list of existing projects on the application form).
• Once your application is accepted, you will get an email from WestGrid account management (in my case this took about 90 minutes
• Over the next couple of days you will get emails from the various components of WestGrid, telling you that you now have accounts on them (lattice, gridstore, robson, blackhole, nexus, glacier, etc.)
• Log onto a grid-enabled machine on which you now have an account, using your grid login id and password that you chose in the first step. I chose glacier: "ssh yourgridusername@glacier.westgrid.ca"
• In the directory .globus under your home directory look for two files: usercert.pem and userkey.pem (usercert.pem is your Grid Canada certificate).

  One thing to watch: it's not always true that glacier has your *.pem files.  For me (Rob), they were only on nexis.westgrid.ca.  
  I stored them on the westgrid myproxy server by doing
     1) login to nexus.westgrid.ca
     2) myproxy-init -c 0 -s myproxy.westgrid.ca
        In (2) you are asked for a GRID pass phrase, where your westgrid password works.  
        You then need to enter a new MyProxy pass phrase, and westgrid recommends using your westgrid password again.
     3) myproxy-get-delegation

• Now you need to join the ATLAS Virtual Organization (VO)

[edit] Renewing your WestGrid Grid-Canada Certificate

More up-to-date information here: [1]

You get an annual reminder that your certificate is about to expire. You click on the link they send you and follow the simple instructions.

Your grid certificate then gets updated automatically on WestGrid machines... (I forget how long that takes, but not long) When I logged on to glacier.westgrid.ca a bit more than a year after first getting my grid certificate, I found that the usercert.pem and userkey.pem files in .globus had been replaced by new ones. However, this did not automatically propagate to my private UI machine that I run all my jobs from, so I needed to do the following on that machine:

• scp mygridusername@glacier.westgrid.ca:~/.globus/userkey.pem ~/.globus/userkey.pem
• scp mygridusername@glacier.westgrid.ca:~/.globus/usercert.pem ~/.globus/usercert.pem
• follow the steps for certificate renewal in join the ATLAS Virtual Organization

last update: --Isabel 11:43, 29 May 2008 (PDT)