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#Introduction

Welcome to the Getting Started with DIRAC and GridPP! Here you'll find (most) of the information you'll need to get started with using the Imperial implementation of DIRAC used by the GridPP Collaboration and associated users.

##Setting up

• Get a grid certificate and join or a create a Virtual Organisation(VO) to work with(guide here);
• Register your grid certificate's DN and VO with the Imperial DIRAC team (email cg-site-admin - at - imperial.ac.uk);
• Set up a DIRAC User Interface (UI) - instructions here.

##The DIRAC tutorials These GitHub tutorials cover the basics of interacting with the DIRAC system via the command line of your UI. We recommend following them in order to a get a grasp of the basics of job submission and data management.

##The DIRAC web portal Perhaps the most useful thing about the DIRAC system is monitoring your jobs via the web portal. You'll need your grid certificate installed in your web browser and your DN and VO to be registered with the Imperial DIRAC instance in order to use the web portal. Once registered, click on the Jobs menu at the top-left of the interface and select the Job monitor option. Of course, you'll need to have submitted some jobs to monitor in order to see anything...

##Metadata Another exciting feature set of the DIRAC system is the built-in user (as opposed to file) metadata system. This can be used to index data uploaded to the grid, and then find it again based on metadata queries. The user metadata may also be accessed via the DIRAC Python API. You can find out more about using user metadata here:

• DIRAC and GridPP - user metadata.

#Useful links

• The DIRAC homepage;
• The DIRAC GitHub tutorials;
• Installing DIRAC - GridPP wiki;
• The Imperial DIRAC web portal (grid certificate required).