Grid Certficates

Important change regarding issuance of Grid Certificates for US institutions

As of March 23, 2013, the DOEGrids Certificate Authority (CA) will no longer issue new or reissue old certificates. The process has now been taken over by the Open Science Grid which operates under the new DigiCert Grid CA. All people who are registered with the ALICE VO and access the grid using a DOEGrid certificate will need to obtain a new certificate via the OSG web interface (see below) and then re-register with the ALICE VO using that new certificate.

(update in progress - 3/8/2013)

Introduction

In order to work within the ALICE Grid infrastructure, [1]AliEn, users must:

• possess a grid certificate from an accepted Certificate Authority
  • For persons from US institutions, it was previously DOEGrids CA but now has transitioned to [2] OSG/DigiCertGrid CA
  • For any ALICE member (including US participants) may use the [3] CERN CA
• be registered with the ALICE Virtual Organization - follow steps shown on [4] AliEn website

Obtaining a Grid Certificate

A grid certificated is typically obtained by and installed in your internet browser. One caveat is that there have been reoccurring problems with managing Grid certificates and VO registration with Safari. FireFox or IE are recommended. Chrome now reportedly works as well. Once a certificate is obtained, one will need to export it as a protected file or files for normal grid use. A personal grid certificate is valid for one year and can be automatically renewed with while it is still valid.

To obtain a new DOEGrid

To obtain a DOEGrids certificate, go to http://www.doegrids.org/ and select 'How to Request Certificates' link on the left side of the page. Select 'How to request a personal certificate"