GridStarting
This page is under development and should not be relied on at present.
The facilities that this tutorial depends on are available to just about all academic and higher education staff and many students in Australia. If you don't fit into that category, please contact the ARCS Help Desk at help@arcs.org.au and we'll try and help you.
A brief tutorial to get you started using the ARCS HPC compute infrastructure.
| Step 1 | Get a Certificate | Install Grix by clicking on the link. Grix will walk you through the process of applying for a certificate and tell you when you need to visit your nearest RAO to get your certificate authorised. Note you will have to show an appropriate photo ID. If you have problems or want to know more, see the Grix Pages. |
| Step 2 | Install Grisu | Grisu is another Java app. Click the link, save the zip file on your desktop and open it up looking for the binary (XXXX). Grisu, in its basic form, provides a very simple means of running a job on a remote compute engine. Grisu is intended to be easily customised, possibly with no programming at all, to suit your specific application. Problems ? Click here. |
| Step 3 | Run a job | By default, Grisu comes with a couple of trivial application templates. A Grisu template is the key to customising Grisu for your application. Click on the link to the right to see how to use one. |
Notes
Step 1 - Grix is a "webstart" application that will install when you click the offered link. It helps you apply form and manage your Grid Certificates. To find out more about Grix, click here. This process is not as easy as we'd like it to be but we are sure you understand that we do need to have appropriate security in place. If Grix does not install correctly, click on the Grix Help page for some suggestions.
Step 2 - ARCS have established the Demo VO for just this purpose. You will not be permitted to run anything fancy here, just the demostrations mentioned. By joining a VO with more quota assigned, you can run larger jobs. If you have quota at one of the ARCS partners machines, its very easy to join a VO associated with that quota. ARCS can probably help you access compute quota at other sites as well, just ask.
Step 3 - There are a number of steps needed to launch that first compute job under Grisu, its not hard and if you follow step by step you will find it quite easy -
Grisu
If Grix installed OK, so almost certainly will Grisu, click here to give it a try. Please follow these steps.
- Start up Grisu
- Generate a proxy
- Generate a VOMS Proxy
- Launch your application.
Watch its progress through the queuing system.
Thats all ! Please let us know if you have problems with this demo or if we can help you in any way to get your jobs running, after all, running 'whoami' can get a bit boring after awhile.