How to use DIRAC#

NectarCAM data are stored on the EGI grid using CTA-DIRAC.

Starting with DIRAC#

To start interacting with DIRAC, one needs to initialize a proxy, with the ctao_nectarcam role enabled:

$ dirac-proxy-init -M -g ctao_nectarcam

DIRAC commands are quite long and can be tedious to learn and handle. Two main families of DIRAC commands which are useful are:

  • dirac-dms-<XXX> which interact with the Data Management System (i.e. data storage);

  • dirac-wms-<XXX> which interact with the Workload Management System (i.e. to submit and interact with jobs on the grid).

Many more details can be found in the CTA-DIRAC users guide.

How to explore NectarCAM data on DIRAC#

Several possibilities exist to explore NectarCAM data on the grid:

  • Using the dirac-dms-filecatalog-cli command:

$ dirac-dms-filecatalog-cli
Starting FileCatalog container console.
Note that you will access several catalogs at the same time:
   DIRACFileCatalog - Master
   TSCatalog - Write
If you want to work with a single catalog, specify it with the -f option
FC:/> ls
prod4_sst
vo.cta.in2p3.fr
FC:/> cd /vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240722
FC:/vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240722>ls
NectarCAM.Run5568.0000.fits.fz
NectarCAM.Run5568.0001.fits.fz
NectarCAM.Run5568.0002.fits.fz
NectarCAM.Run5568.0003.fits.fz
NectarCAM.Run5568.0004.fits.fz

  • Using the COMDIRAC convenient features, which provides simpler aliases to DIRAC commands, such as:

    • dls equivalent to ls on Linux;

    • dget, an alias for dirac-dms-get-file, to download data from DIRAC;

    • dsub, an alias for dirac-wms-job-submit, to submit jobs to DIRAC;

    • dstat to list your active jobs on DIRAC.

To use these commands, one should start a COMDIRAC session with:

$ dinit -p

NectarCAM data can then be explored using dls:

$ dls /vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240722
/vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240722:
NectarCAM.Run5568.0000.fits.fz
NectarCAM.Run5568.0001.fits.fz
NectarCAM.Run5568.0002.fits.fz
NectarCAM.Run5568.0003.fits.fz
NectarCAM.Run5568.0004.fits.fz

Sometimes, it is useful to quickly find the DIRAC location of a given NectarCAM run. The command dfind comes in handy. Suppose you want to know where run 5326 is, or how much slice files it contains:

$ dfind /vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam | grep 5326
/vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240520/NectarCAM.Run5326.0000.fits.fz
/vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240520/NectarCAM.Run5326.0001.fits.fz
/vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240520/NectarCAM.Run5326.0002.fits.fz
/vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240520/NectarCAM.Run5326.0003.fits.fz
/vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240520/NectarCAM.Run5326.0004.fits.fz
/vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240520/NectarCAM.Run5326.0005.fits.fz
/vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240520/NectarCAM.Run5326.0006.fits.fz
/vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam/2024/20240520/NectarCAM.Run5326.0007.fits.fz
$ dfind /vo.cta.in2p3.fr/nectarcam | grep 5326 | grep -e "fits.fz" | wc -l
8

The nectarchain.data.management.DataManagement.findrun method will automatically localize NectarCAM data on DIRAC, given a run number, and fetch the run files for you.

Tips#

Web portal#

CTA-DIRAC has a web portal available at https://ctadirac-01.cscs.cta-observatory.org/DIRAC/ to interact with it. In particular, the Job Monitor application is very useful to interact with your jobs on DIRAC.

Tip

If you submitted your jobs using the ctao_nectarcam role, you would need to re-authenticate in the portal with this role: Click on Settings in the bottom left, and select ctao_nectarcam under Group.

Proxy error#

If from your laptop, when initializing your DIRAC proxy, you ever encounter an error such as:

$ dirac-proxy-init -M -g ctao_nectarcam
Your proxy is valid until Sat Aug  3 11:31:07 2024
; StdErr: ..........................................................
[...]
Certificate verification failed.
outdated CRL found, revoking all certs till you get new CRL
Function: certificate validation error: CRL has expired

this can be due to outdated certificates for DIRAC services stored on your computer. One can re-synchronise them using the following command:

$ dirac-admin-get-CAs