A short introduction for those who may not have ever used a terminal command line before.  The text that is in monospace font is meant to be typed directly onto the command line (but look out for directions that may include sections like YOUR_USER_NAME_HERE which usually means you should type your actual username). 

Step-by-step guide

The Basics: 

  1. First, see the the "Getting Started in UT ATLAS" page. You'll need an account on the UT ATLAS cluster. 
  2. Once you have your account, open a terminal window (linux), the Terminal application (OSX), or download and install an Xterm application for Windows (for example, MobaXterm is a good one, and free).
  3. On the command line ssh into one of the taumachines, for example ssh -X -Y YOUR_USER_NAME@tau6.hep.utexas.edu
  4. You should now have a command prompt on the machine. To make sure you can open an X-Window try xclock. You should see a little clock open in a window. You can kill the clock with Ctrl-C, or use Ctrl-Z and then bg if you'd like to keep it running in the background. (Here's a useful and brief overview of linux commands.) 
  5. Now take a look at what is in your .bashrc file. This is a list of commands that run whenever you log in. You can edit it with emacs .bashrc & . (More about emacs can be found in this emacs tour.)
  6. You should make sure (add) the following lines to this file: 

    1. export ATLAS_LOCAL_ROOT_BASE=/cvmfs/atlas.cern.ch/repo/ATLASLocalRootBase/

      export ALRB_localConfigDir=/code/localConfig
      . /cvmfs/atlas.cern.ch/repo/ATLASLocalRootBase/user/atlasLocalSetup.sh
  7. Save the file in emacs with Ctrl-X Ctrl-S, and then quit with Ctrl-X Ctrl-C.

Getting Started with ROOT:

  1. If you are not already familiar with ROOT there are many good tutorials on the web. I recommend this one. You can download ROOT, read the users manual, find support forums and more all at root.cern.ch. 
  2. On the UT ATLAS cluster, log off and log in again. The ATLAS setup scripts should now have run as you logged in and you should be able to setup ROOT with localSetupROOT. 
  3. Now you can start root with root -l .
  4. At this point you should be able to follow the tutorial mentioned above. It comes with some introductory slides that you can check out. There are some files you'll need that you can grab with wget -r --no-parent --reject "index.html*" http://www.nevis.columbia.edu/~seligman/root-class/files . 

Getting Started on the Grid:

  1. Request a grid certificate and membership in the ATLAS VO: https://atlassoftwaredocs.web.cern.ch/ASWTutorial/basicSetup/grid_vo/
  2. Export the certificate from your browser (or keychain) and save as .p12 file. Copy the file over to the cluster. 
  3. Install the certificate.
  4. Check that it works using  voms-proxy-init -voms atlas


Analysis Software

The next steps will involve specific analysis software, and there are several possibilities (most require access to ATLAS webpages). 

  1. AnalysisTop and TopxAODs.
  2. RIVET
  3. ... 

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