Access to LOFAR

How to get access to LOFAR facilities and become a participant in the project

• If you are part of one of the Astronomical Key Science Projects, please use your designated contact person.
• If you are part of one of the International partners of LOFAR, please contact your designated contact person.
• If you are not part of any of the above please see the information on this page: http://www.lofar.org/contact-lofar

• Page with updates on changes/developments at CEP

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Once you are a participant of the project and you need access to the CEP systems as a programmer or scientist, you will need this information:

• Get your contact person (e.g., Michael Wise) to request an account on the systems and specify what permissions you'll need.
• Ensure that you can enter the portal node (portal.lofar.eu) with your new account.
• Learn the basics of the Lofar Login Environment available at Central Processing.
• Learn the overall layout and use of the central processing (CEP) systems
• Learn about the available packages
• Learn how to use ssh keys, ssh-agents and ssh port forwarding.
• Learn how to use the FreeNX client for compressed X11 output.
• Choosing strong passwords.

Some important notes about the CEP1 and CEP2 home directories:

Please be aware of the following:

• You share your home directory with ~ 275 neighbors
• The observe system depends upon good availability
• The pipeline runs on CEP2 also depend upon good availability
• Home directories are subject to backup operations, more volume means more vulnerability
• Moving large volumes on home-directories on head nodes can stall all cluster-nodes!
• Keep your volume below 100GB (preferably less)
• Use ``rsync –bwlimit=5000`` (5 MB/s) when coping data, use single thread only!
• The weekends are used for observing!

You will have to register. See The LOFAR wiki start page.