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

You will need Science Support to grant you access, unless you are already a member in MoM of the project you are trying to access data for. Once you have access and updated your password you should use the Long Term Archive manual.

The Lofar Software Stack installation page shows which software is installed on the LTA processing locations. You can also use this information as a manual on how to install Lofar software yourself.

Before you access any Lofar system, please take notice of our General User Access Policy (GUAP)

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.

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.