Requesting access to Middle Earth

UW Net IDs are a prerequisite for most forms of access to DiRAC infrastructure. NetIDs are issued to students and staff affiliated with UW. External collaborators need a sponsored NetID in order to access any University of Washington system.

External collaborators must have a sponsoring professor or staff member, who must get their NetID through the Sponsored NetID process with a professor.

User groups

You may request membership for several user groups. All user groups have the same access to the compute resources, but different user groups have different data access permissions.

  • astro - the default user group for all UW NetIDs associated with the Astronomy Department.

  • astro-dirac - the user group that has permission to access Arnor, Gondor, JupyterHub etc.

  • rubin-users - the users that have the permission to access embargoed Rubin data.

To request to be associated with the astro-dirac user group see Requesting access to Middle Earth and to be associated with the rubin-users user group see Requesting Rubin Data Access at UW.

Requesting access to Middle Earth

Ensure you have the pre-requisites:

  • UW NetID

Process:

  • send an email requesting access to Middle Earth compute resources to help-astro@uw.edu

  • include your UW NetID

  • include the the sponsoring faculty/staff member

  • include mjuric@uw.edu

  • include your relationship with the department (undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, external)

  • describe, shortly, how you are connected to the department or a project

  • request to be added to the astro-dirac group

  • request the default shell (bash, zsh etc.) to be associated with your user (default is tcsh)

An example template email may look like:

Hello,

I am Glaurung, The Great Worm. My UW NetID is `GlaurungTheGreat`.
I am a postdoctoral researcher working on World Domination with my advisor Morgoth Bauglir (cc'd in the email)
and I would like to get access to Middle Earth compute resources.

Can I be added to the `astro-dirac` user group?
Can I have `bash` as my default shell?
Thanks!

Regards,
G.

Well formed requests with valid UW NetIDs are effectively auto-approved pending verification of the account.

Requesting Rubin Data Access at UW

Ensure you have the pre-requisites:

  • UW NetID

  • have an active Rubin Accounts at S3DF

  • have completed associated SLAC training videos

  • be listed in SITCOM-50 or equivalent document

Process:

  • send an email requesting access to Rubin Data on Middle Earth resources to help-astro@uw.edu

  • include your UW NetID

  • include your SLAC S3DF username

  • include ajc@astro.washington.edu

  • include all other parties related to the request (advisor/faculty/staff)

  • describe, shortly, how you are connected to the project

An example template email may look like:

Hello,

I am Glaurung, The Great Worm, My UW NetID and SLAC S3DF username is `GlaurungTheGreat`.
I am a researcher working on causing a Mass Extinction Event with the Solar System Group under Morgoth Bauglir (cc'd in the email).
Can I get access to Rubin Data access on Middle Earth?

Andrew Connolly (cc'd) can confirm I am listed in SITCOM-50 and have permissions to access Rubin collaboration data.
Thanks!

Regards,
G.

Once approved by Andrew Connolly you will be given access to Rubin data.