The professor's guide to computing at NIKHEF

Your first actions when arriving at NIKHEF

Let your project leader get a computer account for you by filling in the request form 'Account request' under 'Request a Service'.

You have to decide which operating you want to run on your desktop computer: Windows or Linux. When you are a physicist you probably want a Linux desktop, administrators will prefer a Windows system. When in doubt ask your colleagues.

Desktops

Desktops are ordered by the CT department, please fill in the form 'Hardware request' under 'Request a Service'. CT will install the system software, you do not have the privileges to do that yourself. CT will put the system on your desk and connect it to the network. Never ever plug your computer in another socket, if you need to move your computer send a patch request to CT.

When you first log in you should change the password into a phrase, which is easily remembered by you but hard to guess by others, computer security already starts here.

Then you should familiarize yourself with the NIKHEF computing environment. Your home directory will reside on the home directory server. On Linux the command df will tell you which system this is, on a windows system you can see this in My Computer.
Home directories have quota, backups are made daily. Home directories should be used for personal files. Project related information should be stored in project directories. These have quota and are backed up as well. Data should be stored in data directories, which can reside on central servers or on your own disks. Data directories are never backed up!

Your desktop is the window to other system in and outside NIKHEF. You have to use ssh to login on NIKHEF systems.

When you need help

Ask your colleagues first, they probably have had the same problems before.
Then browse through the index on this page. It contains a list of services provided by CT. The forms to request a service are meant to be self explanatory.
When in doubt ask the helpdesk (room H134, phone 2200). In the case that the helpdesk officer on duty can not help you (s)he will route the problem to an expert in CT or NIKHEF.

Laptops

Laptops are different from desktops:

You are the administrator, which has advantages and disadvantages…
You are responsible for keeping your laptop secure.
Laptops are connected to the guest network, which offers less services than the nikhef network.
In some areas a wireless network is available.

E-mail | Security

The mail server checks incoming mail for viruses. However: never open an attachment if you do not know the sender. Remember that the From: field can be hacked!

E-mail | Spam

Incoming mail is processed by spamfilters. With commands in the file .procmailrc in your home directory you can send the e-mails which are tagged as spam to a separate folder or to /dev/null.

WWW

You can publish your own web pages in the directory $HOME/public_html/. The full pathname of your home page is $HOME/public_html/index.[html|htm|php], the url is http://www.nikhef.nl/~<your_login>. For questions: mail the webmaster

GRID computing

Compute intensive jobs can be submitted to LCG, the LHC Compute Grid. For this you need a certificate from the Dutch Certification Authority (see http://certificate.nikhef.nl). You must be a member of a Virtual Organization (in the High Energy Physics world also known as an experiment). See the user documentation on the LCG website http://lcg.web.cern.ch/LCG