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Single Sign-on (SSO) from Your Desktop (Mac OSX/UNIX/Linux)

Logging in to the XSEDE using only your XSEDE-wide password is easy using GSISSH from your UNIX/LINUX/MacOSX laptop or desktop. Once you download the required components, MyProxy and GSISSH, you will be able to initiate a session on any XSEDE resource where you have an allocation and log in only once during the session, no matter how many commands you execute or how many resources you access. GSISSH allows you to utilize all Globus Security Infrastructure- (GSI-) enabled features of the XSEDE from your desktop.

Your account will be configured on XSEDE resources for you, using the default certificate issued for the XSEDE by the NCSA Certificate Authority (CA). The portal account you created is your XSEDE-wide login. After a completing the installation below on your desktop, you will be able to initiate a session, and start computing immediately.

Download and Installation of MyProxy and GSISSH

Download and unpack the Globus Toolkit installer for your system from http://www.globus.org/toolkit/downloads/. To install MyProxy and GSISSH:

  1. Change your directory to the location of the installer:

    $ cd gt*-installer

  2. Using the configure script and make files to install the package:

    $ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/globus $ make gsi-myproxy gsi-openssh $ make install

    Ignore any Ant or Java errors, as they aren't needed for installing MyProxy and GSISSH.

    Then set your environment variables:

    For CSH
    $ setenv GLOBUS_LOCATION $HOME/globus
    $ setenv MYPROXY_SERVER myproxy.teragrid.org
    $ setenv MYPROXY_SERVER_PORT 7514
    $ source $GLOBUS_LOCATION/etc/globus-user-env.csh

    For Bash
    $ GLOBUS_LOCATION=$HOME/globus
    $ MYPROXY_SERVER=myproxy.teragrid.org
    $ MYPROXY_SERVER_PORT=7514
    $ export GLOBUS_LOCATION MYPROXY_SERVER MYPROXY_SERVER_PORT
    $ . $GLOBUS_LOCATION/etc/globus-user-env.sh

  3. Add these environment variables to your .cshrc, .login, .bashrc, or .profile so you don't need to run them again the next time you login.
Logging into XSEDE

Once you have MyProxy and GSI-SSH installed, you can retrieve your certificate proxies and connect to any XSEDE resource. You only need to enter your XSEDE-wide username and password once. Your XSEDE-wide username and password are the same as your User Portal username and password:

myproxy-logon -T -t number_of_hours -l username
Enter MyProxy pass phrase:
A credential has been received for user username in /tmp/x509up_u25555.
Trust roots have been installed in /home/username/.globus/certificates.

After receiving your certificate proxies, you can use the GSI-enabled commands to connect to any resource without being challenged for a password. These commands include gsissh, gsiscp, and gsisftp.

Please note that using the number_of_hours flag will expire the proxy at that time. If no time limit is requested, the default is 12 hours.