GridPP User Documentation
Learning the basics
For newcomers to the Grid world, or for anyone feeling lost and confused:- Grid Basics
- A presentation giving a general overview of the Grid, including the user support mechanism. This is somewhat out of date but still largely valid.
Getting started as a Grid user
The general procedure for becoming a Grid User is as follows. This process should be reasonably quick: typical times for each stage are as shown below, and you should be running jobs within a week or so - although it will take a lot longer to get to grips with all the details. It may be useful to get an account on a UI in parallel with getting a certificate.- Get a Certificate (2-3 days)
- Join a Virtual Organisation (1-3 days)
- Get an account on a User Interface (UI) machine or install the UI software on your computer (1-2 days)
- Submit some jobs! (1-2 hours)
Monitoring
Monitoring tools can be used to check the overall state of the Grid or particular sites, or to help track down problems if you have jobs failing. Various Grid monitoring and accounting tools are in development for different purposes, although so far they tend to be aimed at administrators rather than users. Links to some of them can be found on the RAL Grid Operations Centre web site. If you have problems it's at least worth looking to see what the general state of the system is. Your VO may also have its own monitoring tools. The LCG ARDA project is developing a monitoring "dashboard" for all the LHC experiments.User Guide
Currently the most comprehensive document for new Grid users is the LCG User Guide (recently renamed to the gLite User Guide but still oriented towards LCG). This is quite long, but it's worth knowing what it contains. Also check for new editions from time to time.Other documentation
There is a lot of documentation around, but finding what you want can sometimes be difficult.- An overview of how to find information
- Links to some documents about the Grid architecure
- The GGUS documentation page has links to many documents
- List of external documentation links
Dealing with errors and other problems
Unfortunately it's unlikely that things will always work perfectly. Some things are covered in the documentation mentioned above, otherwise the links below may help.Creating a Virtual Organisation
If your experiment/project doesn't have an obvious relation to an existing VO you may want to consider creating a new one.The Information System
The information system is described in the User guide, but these pages give some further information about it.
- A quick summary of how to query the information system
- A guide to advanced use of the ldapsearch command
- An explanation of the purpose of the glite-CLUSTER node
CASTOR at the RAL Tier-1
The storage system at the RAL Tier-1 uses a technology called CASTOR, which was developed at CERN but has been cutomised for the RAL environment.
Data Management
We also maintain here a set of documents about using the LCG tools for data management. These documents will help you get started working with files on the Grid.
Last modified Mon 21 March 2011 . View page history
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