A Tour of the GENIUS Portal
The aim of this section is to provide you with an understanding of the GENIUS
portal and how to run jobs using it. Subsequent sections of the tutorial will
assume that the usage of GENIUS is understood.
The first stage in using GENIUS is to configure the various options connected
to which Virtual Organization you are using. In EGEE terms a Virtual Organisation
is a collection o individuals collaborating within a subject area, a single
experiment or any other thematic grouping. For the purposes of this practical
the Virtual Organisation (VO) called Gilda will be used. Gilda is a VO setup
specially for purposes of training and dissemination with EGEE.
Open the following url in a new browser window or just click the link https://grid-tutor.ct.infn.it (if
you are redirected to grid-tutor1.ct.infn.it this is not an error, it is just
the load-balancing mechanism grid-tutor uses). You should see the following
window:
For the sake of clarity the frame on the left with the blue background will
from here on be referred to as the sidebar whilst the frame to the right will
be referred to as the main window.
grid-tutor is a version of GENIUS that has been customized for use in tutorials
and includes features like temporary, 2 week, user accounts for attendees of
tutorials and access to the latest stable version of the EGEE grid middleware
(at the time of writing this document the latest stable EGEE middleware is
LCG 2.2.0). Examples used in the tutorials are installed in each user account
and hence these examples may be freely edited without affecting other users.
The functionality as well as the style of the portal is deliberately consistent
with other implementations of GENIUS and hence you will gain an understanding
of how GENIUS is used by various VO's within EGEE.
When using grid-tutor it is necessary to authenticate yourself twice, once
to access operating system functionalities ad once to access grid functionalities.
The first time an element of GENIUS is used that requires one of these authentications
an appropriate dialog will appear. This authentication will be valid for 30
minutes after the last task using GENIUS (not necessarily a service request).
This means that if your browser window is inactive for 30 minutes or more it
will be necessary to repeat the authentication process.
In the sidebar click on the link Grid Settings.
This section is effectively where you store your preferences. You will be requested
to log on to the operating system as shown in below:
If at this point you are asked about remembering your password for future use, then select No, or, in Mozilla, Never for this site. In Mozilla the dialog looks like this:
You are now presented with a screen asking for your choice of Resource Broker (RB), Replica Location Service (RLS) and Myproxy Server as shown below:
This dialog serves the dual purpose of both
setting your preferences and loading them into the current session. Leave
these settings at their default settings. At the time of writing this document
these default settings are RB: GILDA, RLS: GILDA and Myproxy Server: grid001.ct.infn.it.
These preferences are stored in a file in your account and hence the reason
that this required an Operating system login.
Click Update to continue.
The next stage is to select a VO. Any user may be a member of multiple VO's
simultaneously. The GENIUS portal requires that users specify which VO they
currently wish to use. This decision may be changed at any time. In the sidebar
click Set VO. You will be presented
with the dialog for authenticating yourself on to the grid as shown below:
This authentication connects to the MyProxy server you previously specified.
A MyProxy server acts on your behalf to authenticate jobs you run to each
system your job uses resources on. For the purpose of this tutorial the myproxy
server has already been configured for you. The length of time you specify
in this dialog is the amount of time MyProxy should act on your behalf without
requiring you to repeat your authentication. Do not set this to a longer
time than the default 4 hours. A short time length here increases security
but decreases usability whilst a long time length decreases security but
increases usability, hence the compromise time length of 4 hours. This is
longer than the length of this tutorial.
Set VO is a grid operation because a list of VO's that you have membership
of is established from your MyProxy certificate. This MyProxy certificate
is the means by which the original authentication to the MyProxy server is
made (this step was done for you). For the purposes of this tutorial the
VO to be used is GILDA which should appear as the default, and often only,
selected VO. You should be now seeing the window below:
Ensure GILDA is the selected VO and then click Set. The processes of authenticating to and configuring GENIUS is now complete.
Next Section  |