Introduction

Running the Athena software at a standalone site is slightly different from running at CERN. The main reason for this is that at a standalone site it is assumed that only the kit built releases are available. For most users the kit built releases are sufficient (these are all the standard releases which should be automatically distributed to all Tier 2s). A list of releases installed at RAL PP can be found here (or by selecting site name UKI-SOUTHGRID-RALPP on the search form). However even if the kit release is not installed at RAL (for example if you wish to work on a nightly release) you can still do this from RAL.

Setting up Athena

The full instructions to set up Athena can be found at WorkBookSetAccount. Quick instructions are given here: First log into one of the Linux machines.

Using RAL PP software kits

This is slightly different from at CERN. The software for each kit is installed in:

/gridsoft/SL5/atlas/software/

Each kit comes with its own requirements file which you can use to setup your release. For example to setup release 15.6.6 you would do:

> cd $HOME
> mkdir testarea
> mkdir testarea/15.6.6    (this is the directory in which you will work)
> source /gridsoft/SL5/atlas/software/15.6.6/setup.sh -tag=15.6.6,setup,32
> export CMTPATH=${HOME}/testarea/15.6.6:${CMTPATH}

The software is now setup and ready to use!

Using CERN AFS

Running using CERN /afs will be slower than running using the RAL kit but it will allow you to run on the very latest releases and other development release which won't get automatically distributed to all Tier 2s. Start by doing:

> kinit -5 username@CERN.CH   [Note CERN.CH in uppercase]
> klog username               [If you want to access your AFS files as well]

and then follow the official instructions for setting up your account as if you were at CERN.

Running Jobs

Running Interactive Jobs

When developing code it is necessary to test how the code is working by running a single job over a relatively small data file.

Running Batch Jobs

The Tier 2 at RAL can be used to run batch jobs.

Running on the Grid

For running over very large samples of data it will be necessary to run your job over the grid.

-- AlastairDewhurst - 2009-10-09