The STAR experiment

So you brought a laptop to BNL… and the first thing you want to do is get online, right?
Ok, here's a quick (?) guide to getting what you want without breaking too many rules.

Wired Options:

Software Site Licenses:

Do we have a site license for software package XYZ?

The answer is (almost) always: No!
Neither STAR nor BNL have site licences for any Microsoft product, Hummingbird Exceed, WinZIP, ssh.com's software or much of anything intended to run on individual users' desktops. Furthermore, for most purposes BNL-owned computers do not qualify for academic software licenses, though exceptions do exist.

Utilities for Security and Performance

If your computer seems to be running slower than it used to, pop-up advertising is appearing at an alarming rat

Productivity software and viewers/utilities for various file types

• OpenOffice -- Free and available on multiple platforms.  Perhaps the single best reason to use it is that it natively creates PDF format.  In addition to its own formats, it can read (and write) MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint files (usually -- sometimes formatting details go haywire, but they are constantly updating it.)

To quote from the Cygwin website:  "Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows."

Networking
Software

• PuTTY:
   This is the preferred SSH client for Windows.  It is free, easy to use
  and well maintained for both security and bug issues.
   (As with everything, it is only "maintained" if you regularly check
  for updated versions!)
   Please note that most other SSH clients for Windows are NOT free for
  use on government computers or in the pursuit of lab business, though
  they might function just fine without payment.

BNL-specific requirements and configuration for networked Windows computers:

This area is intended to provide information for STAR members to assist in configuring and using typical desktop/laptop PCs at BNL.

  Windows 2000/XP and Scientific Linux/Redhat Enterprise Linux are the preferred Operating Systems within STAR at BNL for desktop computing, though there is no formal requirement to use any particular OS.

1. Job Tracker database. New version of db structure proposed for
discussion. It allows flexible handling of job parameters and allows
to start GUI development. However, minimal list of parameters is still
not finalized (not  a show-stopper, imho). I'm open to discussion,
nothing is fixed yet.
1.1 I'll keep php-based XML-RPC server for a GUI development phase, we
do not have a working GT4 setup anyway.

2. Job Tracker API draft submitted for comments. It is made with
future WS compatibility in mind. I've studied GT4-WS docs on their

Time	Talk	Presenter
19:10	Job Tracker progress ( 00:10 ) 0 files	Dmitry Arkhipkin (JINR)