Newbie Material

Got To Start Somewhere

Contents

Newbie Material

All of SBND's material can be found on the docDB. It requires a password to access everything, just ask for it!

To be part of the SBND-software mailing list send an email to: listserv@fnal.gov with the following information: SUBSCRIBE SBND-SOFTWARE YOUR NAME. Here is a list of all the mailing lists available: https://listserv.fnal.gov/scripts/wa.exe?INDEX. For more information see: http://listserv.fnal.gov/users.asp#subscribe

Computing Access

See the Computing resources page to see a discussion about the computing privileges that SBND has.

To get a Fermilab computing account follow the instructions at this site. More info are available at this page.
When required, as experiment choose “SBND: SHORT-BASELINE NEAR DETECTOR”.

Write down the initial Kerberos and Services Account password before submitting. This will be necessary once your accounts have been created.

You will receive an email once this is complete which gives you your Fermilab email account and username (you will need this for service now).

In case you already have Fermilab Computing privileges with other experiments and need to get SBND Computing privileges request SBND affiliation.
On ServiceNow search for “Update my Affiliation/Experiment/Collaboration membership Request”,
file in the form, verify that your name and kerberos principal are correct, In the Additional Affiliations section click on the Add button and fill the text box with: “SBND: SHORT-BASELINE NEAR DETECTOR”, then click Submit.
An SBND representative will review the request and eventually approve it.

Once you get SBND Computing privileges make your computer is ready to ssh to SBND nodes.
Check that have the right ssh configuration, add the following to your machine's ~/.ssh/config.
Create the file if it's not there. In some systems you might need to reload the ssh agent. You also want to have this file in the gpvm machine.

Host *.fnal.gov
  ForwardAgent yes
  ForwardX11 yes
  ForwardX11Trusted yes
  GSSAPIAuthentication yes
  GSSAPIDelegateCredentials yes

Now you should be able to log on by typing:

kinit -f [yourusername]@FNAL.GOV
ssh [yourusername]@sbndgpvm01.fnal.gov

MacOS users troubleshooting:
For MacOS users, in case they get the following message

Warning: No xauth data; using fake authentication data for X11 forwarding.

when logging in to SBND GPVM nodes, they need to add to the above also the line

  XAuthLocation /opt/X11/bin/xauth

MacOS users can't use kerberos tools from conda environment. To check what kerberos tools are set as default, run the following command

which kinit

if the output is different from

/usr/bin/kinit

and it has conda in the path, possibly the system is using kerberos tool from conda environment, which is not compatible with FNAL kerberos setup. Users need either to disable conda environment, or use the system kinit running:

/usr/bin/kinit -f [yourusername]@FNAL.GOV

Reset Fermilab passwords
You can reset your Fermilab passwords for service-now here.
If you can't remember your password because you didn't write it down then you will have contact the service desk.

Communication and Asking for Help

We use different technology to communicate, depending on the purpose and type of communication.

  • Emails are used to send announcements, call for meetings or other events and, in general all important communication that shouldn't be missed goes through emails. Sign in to SBND mailing lists by sending an email to listserv@fnal.gov with no subject and in the body put: SUBSCRIBE NAME-OF-MAILING-LIST Name Lastname, for example I would write: SUBSCRIBE SBND-SOFTWARE Iker de Icaza.

  • Slack is used for day to day communication, particularly useful if more than one could answer --remember SBND collaborators span several time zones-- or if the answer could benefit more people than just you. Once you have a FNAL account sign-in to SBN Slack with you FNAL account.

  • Zoom is used for meetings, you will need to have it installed on your computer. You don't need to make an account to use it, however if you open it with your FNAL email you can see Fermilab's rooms listed. Pro Tip: configure it to start meetings with no video and muted, also but less important, put your name as you would like it to appear to others.

New to Liquid Argon Technology/ Neutrino physics and SBND?

If you are new to Liquid Argon technology then here as some links you might find useful:

Stolen straight from the 35 tonne page:

The SBN Proposal: A Proposal for a Three Detector Short-Baseline Neutrino Oscillation Program in the Fermilab Booster Neutrino Beam

The MicroBooNE

The ICARUS publications: http://icarus.lngs.infn.it/publications.php

Here is a list of publications/books that people have found useful. Please add to the list!

New to the Software Surrounding SBND?

To get started you need to have a basic knowledge of c++ and you need to learn LArsoft. Root and Git are also useful.

Art and LArsoft

Here is a few places to look at more information about Art and LArsoft.

mrb g sbndcode

Do

mrb g larexamples

The g is short for gitCheckout.

C++

There are a multitude of resources for c++. There are several books. The one I learnt form was Accelerated C++

For online resources Stack Exchange is useful so is cppreference. If you have a good c++ tutorial/documentation add it to the list!

ROOT

ROOT is also useful to know and it can be used within LArsoft. If you are new to ROOT and you have a bit of time to learn it I recommend the Nevis tutorials. Given, is an estimated time to complete each section so you have a good idea how much time the whole tutorial takes. The ROOT pages are powered by doxygen and are useful for finding information about specific functions or finding a function you need. Below is a few more places that are useful when learning ROOT. Feel free to add to the list!

Git

New to Git? if so do the quick tutorial to get an idea of how it works. To see how it used in SBND see the Working on a feature branch (to easily share code).

Pro Tip: Log into a gpvm node and do the following commands to setup your git account:

git config --global user.name "Name Lastname" 
git config --global user.email "user@fnal.gov"

With this you will have your commits signed by you and listed neatly on your Redmine account. You CAN list another email other than your FNAL one, but you need to change it accordingly on your Redmine account.