Authentication

Authentication at ESGF from NIRD

In order to download data via ESGF one needs a freely available id called OpenID looking like this https://esgf-data.dkrz.de/esgf-idp/openid/xyz

As a standard the download scripts created by the ESGF API use certificates for authentication. These need to be renewed after a short period of time (3 days?). While the download script can renew the certificate automatically, it needs at least Java 9 to do so (and the user to provide the password of her / his OpenID). Unfortunately the latest JDK available on NIRD is Java 8 which causes the certificate renewal to fail. A recent enough JDK can be installed locally and has been done by user jang:

/nird/home/jang/bin/jdk-13

For this to become the standard Java version for the current user on NIRD, the java executable has to be in the path before the standard paths!

workaround on other machine

The workaround is to run one of the download scripts at your local machine with Java 9, perform the certificate renewal and then kill the download script. Then rsync the folder ~/.esg to NIRD. The script esg_credentials_to_nird.sh provides a way to do that assuming you have the same local user name on NIRD as on your local machine. If not, please use the line

rsync -av ~/.esg <user>@login.nird.sigma2.no:

for the transfer.