Prerequisites

The QCG-Now program itself doesn’t depend on any third-party software. It is distributed with all required dependencies.

Please ensure that the firewall’s configuration allows to make connections to ports 22, 443 and 8443 as a minimum.

Moreover, in order to start using the computational infrastructure, so be able to run computational jobs, the active access to resources is necessary.

PLGrid infrastructure

An access to the basic set of resources offered by the PLGrid infrastructure may be granted from the plgrid.pl webpage. To this end a user has to make a few steps:

  • create the PLGrid account,
  • add new affiliation,
  • apply for the test grant,
  • generate Simple CA certificate,
  • apply for the access to QosCosGrid services.
  • wait up to 12 hours - this time is needed to propagete infromation about a new account across the infrastructure

Manual configuration of certificates

The instruction below allows to configure certificates in PLGrid environment by hand. Therefore it replaces the automatic configuration made by KeyFS service.

  1. Go to: https://portal.plgrid.pl

  2. Select Certificates tab

  3. If you do not yet have a SimpleCA certificate generated, you should press the button to generate such a certificate

    Note: It is possible to use other certificates than SimpleCA (from other CAs). In this case, you can skip the first 4 steps and use an alternative certificate for the rest of the procedures described in this guide

  4. Download the certificate by clicking “Save certificate”:

  5. Copy the downloaded certificate (*.p12 format) to the qcg.man.poznan.pl machine, to your home directory, using for example WinSCP

    Notice: You need to use PLGrid user & password

  6. Log in to the qcg.man.poznan.pl machine (using e.g. a putty program or another ssh client)

    Notice: You need to use PLGrid user & password

  7. On the qcg.man.poznan.pl machine, in the home directory (in the one where the copied p12 file is located), you should call the following commands:

    • Notice 1: in the following commands, replace cert.p12 with the name of the copied certificate file
    • Notice 2: for all commands requiring a password (Password, pass phrase), please use the user’s password to the portal
    • Notice 3: the ~/.globus directory may already exist - make sure it does not contain other certificates that may theoretically be needed
     mkdir ~/.globus
     openssl pkcs12 -nocerts -in cert.p12 -out ~/.globus/userkey.pem
     openssl pkcs12 -clcerts -nokeys -in cert.p12 -out ~/.globus/usercert.pem
     chmod 400 ~/.globus/userkey.pem
     chmod 644 ~/.globus/usercert.pem
    
  8. Furthere requirements for QCG-NOW users

    1. Invoke the following commands on the qcg.man.poznan.pl machine:
       echo "export X509_USER_CERT=~/.globus/usercert.pem" >> ~/.bashrc
       echo "export X509_USER_KEY=~/.globus/userkey.pem" >> ~/.bashrc
      
    2. You need to upgrade QCG-Now to version >= 1.4.3-1

    3. In the program’s configuration window, in the “Security” tab, the parameter “Proxy provider configuration” should be set to “Automatic” or if “Manual” is selected, the “Proxy provider URL” should be set to “qcg.man.poznan.pl”

QCG Testbed

Alternatively there is an option to use a small QCG testbed environment. If you want to apply for it, just send an e-mail to us: qcg@plgrid.pl.