Getting an Account on a User Interface

How to obtain an account and use a machine that contains the tools and configuration to use the Grid.

Getting an account

Apart from registering with a VO, a user must also have an account on a User Interface machine (UI) in order to access the Grid. Such a machine has Grid command-line tools and libraries installed to enable the user to work with the Grid, configured appropriately for the VO and the local Grid environment. To obtain such an account, a local system administrator must be contacted, either at the user's own site or at a central site like CERN.

For example, the CERN lxplus service can be used as a UI, as described in the following document:
https://twiki.cern.ch/twiki/bin/view/LCG/AfsUiUserSetup

This use could be extended to other Linux UI machines mounting AFS.

It is also possible for a user to install the UI software on his own machine, as described elsewhere in this site: the page:
Installing a gLite User Interface
explains how to do this.

For users with a preference for Windows, getting a UI follows the same principles, however some software is needed to emulate the Linux platform on a Windows machine to be able to use the same commands and access the AFS in ways described in this document. One such piece of software is Hummingbird Exceed. There is also a project to provide a UI directly under Windows, see:
http://grid2win.gilda-forge.ct.infn.it/