Portal Users Guide

This guide is intended to help users get started using the portal tools.  The capabilities described here apply to all users, including the portal administrator.  For additional capabilities of the admin user, please see the accompanying document, Admin.html.

 

The NMI portal is built on top of Jetspeed (see http://jakarta.apache.org/jetspeed/site/index.html), and more information may be found there.

 

The following instructions apply to the default build.  Your administrator may have made additional customizations, so there may be missing and/or additional features in your portal.

Creating an Account

After pointing your browser to the portal URL, you should see a page similar to the following:

 

Figure 1 Portal entry page.

Your administrator may have customized the colors and content.  Click the “Create New Account” button in the upper center.  You will be prompted to fill out the form shown in Figure 2. 

 

Figure 2 Fill out the form to create a new account.

You will be prompted if your username is already in use.  You also must provide an email address.

 

Note that your portal administrator has the option to disable automatic account creation.  In this case you will be notified by email when your account is created.

 

After creating your account, you should see a page similar to the following. 

 

Figure 3 Logged in view of the portal.

You are now ready to explore the portal features.

 

Customizing Your Portal Display

At the bottom of the portal tool button column on the left, you should see a button labeled “Customization”.  Click this to get the following screen:

 

Figure 4 Portal pane list.  Click the pane to edit the portlet content.

The links in Figure 4 correspond to the left hand column buttons in Figure 3.  From this page you may rearrange the order that portlets appear or even change layouts (although we don’t recommend the latter). 

 

Clicking one of the links (say, “Schedule”) brings up a screen similar to Figure 5.  The display shows the content and properties of the Schedule tab, shown in Figure 3.  We have added the “BBC World News” portlet to the display by clicking the “Add Portlet” button (second from left on the top row) and choosing from the list of available components.

 

Figure 5 You can add portlets to any of the tabs.

After you have finished making your modifications, save and apply the changes until you return to the standard user screen.  You should now see a display similar to Figure 6.

Figure 6 After customization, the schedule tab now also includes a new portlet.

Joining Groups

Your portal administrator may have created one or more groups that you are allowed to join.  Group spaces are controlled by the administrator and have shared layouts.  Your group administrator controls the customization of these pages.  Group page are also used by shared applications (chat, discussions, etc.)

 

To join a group, click the “Memberships” button (see Figure 3).  You should see a list of your current groups and also groups that you may join, such as shown in Figure 7..  If you don’t see anything, there are no groups for you to join.  Contact your portal administrator to set up groups.

 

Figure 7 Get a list of available groups by clicking the Membership button.

 

After joining a new group, it will be added to the horizontal tab list across the top of your screen.  See Figure 8 for an example: the new group shown is called “TestGroup”.  Click this tab and you can see your group space.

 

 

Figure 8 The TestGroup space includes group chats, discussions, resources, and schedules.

You can now use the group features to communicate with other group members.

 

Using Grid Portlets

Several of the portlets (Proxy Manager, LDAP, Grid FTP, etc) can be used to access remote grid resources.  These do not need to be installed on the same host as the portal server and can be anywhere.  However, you will need a Grid credential to use them. 

 

The NMI portal is set up to work with remote MyProxy servers.  See http://grid.ncsa.uiuc.edu/myproxy/ for more information on MyProxy.  This and other Grid resources must be set up separately from the portal.  We recommend the NMI GRIDS center releases if you are interested in setting up a grid, although the portal software has been tested with several other Globus (http://www.globus.org/) releases.  See http://www.nsf-middleware.org/ and http://www.grids-center.org/ for more information. 

 

We will assume a general familiarity with Grid security from the user.  See documentation from the Globus and MyProxy sites for more extensive documentation. 

Storing a Proxy Credential

The Proxy Manager portlet retrieves short term proxy credentials from a remote MyProxy server.    Before you can use this portlet, you must log into a MyProxy client host and deposit your credentials into the MyProxy server.  This must be done outside of the portal. 

 

The general steps are

1. Acquire a long term Grid credential and private key on a host with MyProxy installed on it.
2. On Unix/Linux, issue the following bash shell commands:

export GLOBUS_LOCATION=/Path/to/MyProxy/Client/Installation

export MYPROXY_SERVER=myproxy.server.name

export PATH=$GLOBUS_LOCATION/bin:$PATH

. $GLOBUS_LOCATION/etc/globus-user-env.sh

 

For csh and tcsh users, use the following :

setenv GLOBUS_LOCATION /Path/to/MyProxy/Client/Installation

setenv MYPROXY_SERVER myproxy.server.name

setenv PATH $GLOBUS_LOCATION/bin:$PATH

source $GLOBUS_LOCATION/etc/globus-user-env.csh

 

3. From the command line, run myproxy-init and enter your username, password, and desired pass phrase.

 

You now have a stored credential that will be valid for one week, by default.  This duration can be increased or decreased.  As long as this ticket is valid, you can acquire short term credentials through the Proxy Manager portlet.

Getting Credentials through the Portal

To get your credentials, first log in to the portal as normal and click the “Proxy Manager” button on the left-hand navigation list.  You should see a screen similar to the one below.  You will see several red warning messages because you do not yet have credentials.

 

Figure 9 The proxy manager portlet and two other grid portlets.

Click the “Get New Proxy” button to see a form similar to the one below.  You need to provide the name of the MyProxy server that you are using (it is the same that you used in the MYPROXY_SERVER environment variable above), and the port.  The default port for MyProxy servers is 7512.  Contact your Grid administrator if using a different port number.  You must lastly provide your user name and pass phrase.  The first is your username on the MyProxy client and the second is the pass phrase that you provided when you stored your credential.

 

Figure 10 Getting a Grid credential.

After successfully logging in, you should see a screen similar to Figure 11, from which you can review your credential properties.  The Proxy Manager allows you to store and manage multiple credentials for multiple grids. If you have more than one credential stored in more than one MyProxy server, change the hostname (as shown in Figure 10) to point to the second MyProxy server and get a new credential.  The NMI Grid portlets will maintain copies of all credentials.

 

Figure 11 After successfully logging in, you can view credentials and use Grid services.

If your login fails, you will get a red warning message in the Proxy Manager portlet.  If you have repeated failures to log in, contact your portal administrator: you may be trying to use a MyProxy server with an unrecognized CA.

Using Newsgroups

The NMI portal newsgroup system provides several levels of administration:

1.      Super admins: All portal administrators are automatically also newsgroup “super administrators”.  Super-admins can assign topic administration privileges to any user.

2.      Admins: these users have privileges to allow or deny regular users to join groups and can change access (read/write) privileges.

3.      Regular users: these users can read and (if allowed) post to topics.

User roles and permissions topic-based: a user can have admin privileges of one news topic and only regular user privileges in another. Portal administrators always have newsgroup super-admin privileges.

Joining Newsgroups

Before you can post to a newsgroup topic, you must first request a subscription and then be approved by one of the topic administrators.  First, log into the portal and click “Newsgroups (Request)”.  Under “User’s Topic Management”, click “Select New Groups” to see all currently unsubscribed groups, or click “View All” to see your list of subscribed and unsubscribed groups.  You should see a screen similar to Figure 12.  Pick a group of your choice and the privileges you want to have (such as read, write, and admin) and then click “Submit Selections” at the end.  

 

Figure 12 Select from the list of available newsgroups.

You must now wait for a topic administrator to approve your subscription to the topic.  The admin may also edit the privileges that you requests. 

 

To see if your request is still pending, log into the portal, click the “Newsgroup” request button, and click the “Pending Requests” option. 

Reading and Posting

To read and post messages to your subscribed lists, select the “Newsgroup (Read/Post)” button. You should see a screen similar to Figure 13.  Select one of your topics from the topic list and you should see all posted messages to that topic.  Select a message from the list to see the message.  You can either post a new message or respond to the current message. 

 

If you prefer to see a threaded view of posted messages, click the “newsgroupThreaded” tab across the top.

 

Figure 13 Read and post to subscribed topics.

Running Newsgroups

Regular portal users may be granted Newsgroup topic administration privileges by the portal administrator.  These users can approve or reject requests to join topics.  To see the topics that you currently administer, click the “Newsgroup (Admin)” button on the left-hand navigation list. 

 

You should see a screen similar to Figure 14. 

Figure 14 See current users and approve new users.

Select a topic under “Topic List” and view subscribed users and requests.  You can approve or delete requests for subscriptions. 

 

To edit privileges of already subscribed users, click the “newsadmin part 2” tab across the top.  Select one of the topics from your topic list and you should see the subscribed users and their privileges.  You can edit privileges here to, for example, revoke write access or grant admin privileges.

 

Figure 15 Newsgroup admins can change subscribed users' privileges.

Finally, you can see information about all users subscribed to the topics that you manage by selecting “newsadmin part 3”, the rightmost tab across the top under “My Workspace”.   You should see a screen similar to Figure 16.

 

 

Figure 16 A unified view of all the users of the topics that you manage.

Click the radio button next to a user’s name, then click “Select User”.  You should see all of his/her permissions on current groups and pending requests for groups that you manage.