If you want to run the GridCat Python client, there is a problem on some nodes at BNL related to BNL's proxy settings. Here are some notes that may help.

First, you'll need to get the gcatc.py Python script itself and put it somewhere that you can access. Here is the URL I used to get it, though apparently others exist:

http://gdsuf.phys.ufl.edu:8080/releases/gridcat/gridcat-client/bin/gcatc.py

(I used wget on the node on which I planned to run it, you may get it any way that works.)

Now, the trick at BNL is to get the proxy set correctly. Even though nodes like stargrid02.rcf.bnl.gov have a default "http_proxy" environment variable, it seems that Python's httplib doesn't parse it correctly and thus it fails. But it is easy enough to override as needed.

For example, here is one way in a bash shell:

[root@stargrid02 root]# http_proxy=192.168.1.4:3128; python gcatc.py --directories STAR-WSU

griddir /data/r23b/grid

appdir /data/r20g/apps

datadir /data/r20g/data

tmpdir /data/r20g/tmp

wntmpdir /tmp

Similarly in a tcsh shell:

[stargrid02] ~/> env http_proxy=192.168.1.4:3128 python /tmp/gcatc.py --gsiftpstatus STAR-BNL

gsiftp_in Pass

gsiftp_out Pass

Doug's email of November 3, 2005 contained a more detailed shell script (that requires gcatc.py) to query lots of information: http://lists.bnl.gov/mailman/private/stargrid-l/2005-November/002426.html.
You could add the proxy modification into that script, presumably as a local variable.