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This page gives a very brief introduction to SLAC's new S3DF (SLAC Shared Scientific Data Facility) cluster to help you get started.  Note that, as of April 15 2024, onboarding involves automatic creation of both Active Directory ("windows") and unix accounts. The AD account is only useful for cyber training and logging into the Service Now ticket web portal.


For what follows, we We assume you already have a Unix account and your main intent is to run the Fermitools/Fermipy. During the transition, issues are discussed in the #s3df-migration slack channel. You can also join the #help-sdf channel if you wish to see SLAC-wide discussion of S3DF issues.

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Basically, ssh to s3dflogin.slac.stanford.edu and from there ssh to fermi-devl (no .slac.stanford.edu; it is a load balancer, but there is only one node so far) to do actual interactive work.  The login nodes are not meant for doing analysis or accessing data. Of course, real computational intensive tasks are meant for the batch system and not the interactive nodes either. Send email to s3df-help at slac.stanford.edu for issues.

Info
titleAccount maintenance

Unix Password:

SLAC currently requires a password change every 6 months. You can use https://unix-password.slac.stanford.edu/ to do this.

Cyber Training

Cyber training comes up annually. If you have an Active Directory (aka Windows) account, just follow the links.

There are issues with the training system at the moment if you only have a unix account, so here is (hopefully) temporary advice on how to navigate it (note that if you got an email saying your training is coming due, the SLAC ID (SID) is embedded in the url in the email - that is the xxxxxxx in the instructions below - if your account has not been disabled, you can ssh to rhel6-64 and issue the command:

res list user <your unix account name>

which will give your SID (along with your account status).

if none of that works, ask your SLAC Point of Contact):

You need to go to the url below; DO NOT click on forgot password. Give it your system id  (SID) number (xxxxxxx).

Note: the interim training password  is "SLACtraining2005!". If it does not work, email slac-training, asking them to reset it. Then go back to the original link, enter SID and this password. Then do CS100.

https://slactraining.csod.com/

Basically, always use the SID where "user name" is requested.

Info
titlepasswordless ssh to fermi-devl

You can modify your .ssh config to allow direct passwordless access from your device to fermi-devl, by adding this to your .ssh/config file on your end:

Host slac*
        User <you>

Host slacl
        Hostname s3dflogin.slac.stanford.edu

Host slacd
        Hostname fermi-devl
        ProxyJump slacl

and then add your e.g. ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub from from your device to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys at SLAC, using:

ssh-copy-id <you>@s3dflogin.slac.stanford.edu


For those using the cvs server on centaurusa outside from slac, you have to add a proxyjump for centaurusa. Since the cvs server is written in all CVS/Root files of a cvs package, you have to use the following solution:

Host centaurusa.slac.stanford.edu
        Hostname centaurusa
        ProxyJump slacl



Info
title.bash_profile

.bashrc:

  • a directory gets added to your home dir, called profile_d. It points back to the group equivalent in /sdf/group/fermi/sw/ and includes the contents of those conf files into your session's bashrc. Group-level settings go there, eg $LATCalibRoot.
  • don't overwrite your .bash_profile or you'll lose the code that does this:

# SLAC S3DF - source all files under ~/.profile.d
if [[ -e ~/.profile.d && -n "$(ls -A ~/.profile.d/)" ]]; then
 source <(cat $(find -L ~/.profile.d -name '*.conf'))
fi

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Info
titlecvs access

For now, we are leaving the live cvs repo on nfs. The cvs client has been installed on the iana nodes.

Set:

CVSROOT=:ext:$<USER>@centaurusa.slac.stanford.edu:/nfs/slac/g/glast/ground/cvs

Info
titleCalibrations

Calibrations go to 

$LATCalibRoot=/sdf/group/fermi/ground/releases/calibrations/

Write access is controlled by the glast-calibs permissions group.

the environment variable is set in the group profile. (Note: /sdf/data/fermi/a/ground/releases/calibrations is historical and not to be used)

Info
titleunix group managment

If you manage any of the unix groups from the old NFS cluster (eg glast-catalog, glast-skywatch etc), maintenance is still only available from the rhel6-64 machines, using the ypgroup command. This will change once the legacy filesystems go away.