SAFE is an online user service management system. Through SAFE, individual users can request machine accounts, reset passwords, see available resources and track their usage. All users must be registered on SAFE before they can apply for an account on the DiRAC systems.
- Go to the SAFE New User Signup Form
- Fill in your personal details. You can come back later and change them if you wish
- Click "Submit"
- You are now registered. Your SAFE password will be emailed to the email address you provided. You can then login with that email address and password
At this point your account is registered on the SAFE but you do not have a user account on any of the DiRAC systems. To obtain a machine account on DiRAC please follow the instructions below at:
- Type in the email address you have registered with
- Type in your SAFE password
- Click "Login"
- You are now on the Main Page and here you can see Menus along the top which give access to SAFE functionality
- Go to the Menu Your details and select Set 2 factor token. A scanable QR code will be displayed
- Install a suitable smart-phone app such as google-authenticator (android, ios) on your phone or mobile device
- Follow the app instructions to add a new account and scan the displayed QR code (or type in the displayed 26 character key)
- Type the verification code generated by the app into the Verification code box
- Click Set
2-Factor Authentication is now enabled. Each time you log in to the SAFE, in addition to requesting your usual SAFE credentials, you will also be asked for the current 6-digit authentication code from the app.
To disable 2 factor authentication
- Go to the Menu Your details and select Disable 2 factor authentication
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Go to the Menu Your details and select Update personal details
- Make the changes you wish
- Click Commit Update to save the changes
- Go back to Your details and you will see the revised information
Do not forget the last step, or nothing will happen. Note that your postal address does not automatically include the name of your department and institution; if you want these in your postal address, you must type them again.
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Go to the Menu Your details and select Update email
- Enter the new email address and click Request
A verification email will then be sent to the new email address. This email contains a link which you must use to verify your new address. On acknowledging your new address the change will be committed and you must use the new email address when logging into SAFE
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Go to the Menu Your details and select Change SAFE password
- Fill in the boxes and click Change
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Enter your email address
- Click Email
- SAFE will mail your password to your email address
SAFE will only mail to email addresses it already knows. But email is not a secure medium, so if you change your password this way, you should immediately change it again from inside the SAFE.
Of course, anyone could go to SAFE, type your email address and request a new password by clicking "Email". If that happens you will receive an email message out of the blue saying that your password has been changed. In this case you should certainly change your password again.
The minimum you require to create a DiRAC system account is a SAFE account and a Project Code. You should sign up for a SAFE account as described above and Your project's PI or Project Manager should be able to supply you with the project code.
Additionally, some DiRAC systems also require that you:
- add the public part of a SSH key to your SAFE account to use when logging into the system. If this is required for your system, you must upload this to SAFE before requesting an account by following the instructions at: `How to add an SSH key to your SAFE account`_
The following list indicates what is required by each system:
- Extreme Scaling (Tursa): Password (YES), SSH Key (YES)
- Memory Intensive (COSMA): Password (NO), SSH Key (YES)
- Data Intesive at Leicester (DIaL): Password (NO), SSH Key (YES)
- Data Intensive at Cambridge (DIaC): Password (NO), SSH Key (YES)
Once you have thesem you should:
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Go to the Menu Login accounts and select Request login account
- Choose the project you want the account for in the "Choose Project for Machine Account" box.
- Choose the system you want the account on by selecting from the available systems. (If a system is not available to select it may be because you have not yet added an SSH key to your account.)
Now you have to wait for your PI or project manager to accept your request to register. When this has happened, the systems team are prompted to create your account on the service machine. Once this has been done, you will be sent an email. You can then pick up your password for the service machine from your SAFE account.
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Go to the Menu Login accounts and select the account you want to use to join the project
- Click username which displays details of this service machine account.
- Click the Join Project button
- Type the code for the project (e.g. dp001) in the box and hit the Join button
Now you have to wait for your PI or project manager to accept your request to join the project. When this has happened, the systems team are prompted to link your account on the service machine to the new project. Once this has been done, you will be sent an email and you should be able to use the project code in your job scripts to charge your job against.
All DiRAC systems may require you to register an SSH key in the SAFE before you can request an account on the system. To do this you will require a SSH key pair.
You upload the public part of the key pair to your machine account using the DiRAC SAFE as follows:
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Go to the Menu Login accounts and select the account you want to add the SSH key to
- On the subsequent Login account details page click the Add Credential button
- Select SSH public key as the Credential Type and click Next
- Either copy and paste the public part of your SSH key into the "SSH Public key" box or use the button to select the public key file on your computer.
- Click Add to associate the public SSH key part with your account
The public SSH key part will now be added to your login account. You will receive an email notification once the request has been completed.
If you still remember your current machine account password, you can simply log in to the DiRAC system as normal and then use the passwd command
passwd
You will then be prompted to enter your current password, and then your new password twice.
If you have forgotten your current password, or it has expired, then you can ask for it to be reset:
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Go to the Menu Login accounts and select the account you need the new password for
- Click username which displays details of this service machine account.
- Click New Login Account Passwd
Now the systems team will change your password. When this has been done, you will be informed by email; this means that you can come back to SAFE and pick up your new password.
Wait till you receive the email with your details. Then:
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Go to the Menu Login accounts and you will see your account on the service machine listed. Click on the appropriate account.
- This will display details of your account. Click View Login Account Password You will need to enter in your SAFE password and then click view, and you will see your password to the service machine
This password is generated randomly by the software. It's best to copy-and-paste it across when you log in to the service machine.
After you login, you will be prompted to change it. You should paste in the password retreived from SAFE again, and then you will be prompted to type in your new, easy-to-remember password, twice.
Note that when you change your password on the service machine in this way, this is not reflected on the SAFE.
There are three mailing list options available.
- The Important Issues mailings will contain information on major upgrades and future plans. This option is enabled for all users by default.
- The Announcements mailings will contain information on training courses, newsletters, events, and other general announcements. This option is enabled for all users by default.
- The System Status Notifications will inform users when major components of the service goes up or down, including the reminders of the next planned maintenance shutdowns. This option is not enabled by default, those wishing to receive this information will need to explicitly subscribe to it.
Note
System Status Notifications are only used currently for the Extreme Scaling (Tesseract) system.
Any combination of these three options may be selected via SAFE:
- Login to SAFE.
- Go to the Menu Your details click Update Email settings
- In the panel headed Update email settings make sure there are ticks beside the options you would like to subscribe to.
- Click Update List Preferences
Note
There is an option to unsubscribe from the user mailings completely, which overrides any option enabled in Mailing list preferences panel. This will be set automatically to unsubscribe you if mailings sent to an email address are returned to us as "undeliverable". If you change your email address we recommend you check you have not been unsubscribed if your previous email address had gone out of service. This option is found via the menu Your details by clicking on Update personal details. The option is named Opt out of user emails. If you change this option, you must click Commit Update for the change to take effect.
Note
Regardless of whether you are subscribed to a particular mailing list, you can still view ALL user mailings which have been sent, in SAFE. See How to view user mailings for details.
Login to SAFE and Go to the Menu Login accounts, select the username which you wish to see details for. You will then see the information for this account. You will see the quotas for the disk space (if the project group/system is using these) and how much is in use.
The budget values displayed are updated every morning, and the values shown for disk use are updated four times a day. For this reason, all these values may not be completely up-to-date. If there is a lot of activity in your project, the numbers shown could be significantly different from from the current ones.
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Go to the Menu Service information and select Report Generator
- Select the report you wish to run and the format you want the output in (web, PDF, CSV, XML) by clicking the appropriate icon in the list.
- Complete the required information in the form: this will usually consist of at least a date range to analyse and may have other options depending on the report you are running.
- Click Generate Report
If you are a PI or Project Manager, you will have access to additional reports to generate information on whole projects or groups as well as your own usage and the usage of the service as a whole.
Login to SAFE. Then:
- Go to the Menu Help and Support and select Your support requests
- Click the number of a query to check the contents of the query log
This will show you the queries of yours that haven't yet been resolved. Note that some of the internal correspondence about a query will not be shown. You can also use SAFE to submit a query—use New support request.