The TeraGrid Visualization Gateway is a Web interface for gaining simplified access to a variety of TeraGrid visualization resources and services. All new users will receive a "New User Form" via U.S. postal mail that contains a username and password for the TeraGrid User Portal. This same username and password can also be used to login to the Visualization Gateway.

Log in to the Visualization Gateway

Logging In to the Gateway

The gateway can be reached from the menu bar of any User Info page or by linking to http://viz.teragrid.org from your browser. From the Gateway home page, enter your portal username and password in the corresponding fields in the login form, and click the "Login" button.

Overview of Features

Once you are logged in to the gateway you will notice 4 tabs across the top of the page. These 4 tabs represent the different services that are available from the gateway.

• Proxy Manager: helps you manage the credentials that you use to access TeraGrid (and other) resources. The gateway automatically loads the proxy for your NCSA credential (the one issued when your TeraGrid account was created) when you login. This is set as your default. The other services will use the current default proxy to access remote resources. This service also allows you to load additional proxies, which can then be set as the default for the currently active session.
• Remote Visualization: enables you to launch remote visualization sessions on Maverick, TACC's TeraGrid Visualization System, through the use of a VNC server running on Maverick and a VNC client running in a Web browser on the your local resource.
• ParaView: enables you to launch a ParaView server, a parallel visualization application for large datasets, on the UC/Argonne TeraGrid Visualization cluster, and connect to it via a ParaView client running on your local resource.
• File Management: enables you to move data onto and off of the TeraGrid, as well as betweeen TeraGrid resources. If multiple proxies have been loaded, you can individually select which proxy to use for the source and destination of the transfer.

Helpful Hints

• Getting Help: Clicking the question mark icon in the upper left corner of the title bar will display help documentation available for that page.
• DNs, Proxies, & the Gateway: When your TeraGrid account was created, a Distinguished Name (DN) was created on your behalf using the NCSA certificate authority. This DN is stored in your profile in our account database and automatically propagated to all sites when your account is created. A proxy certificate with this same DN can be retrieved from the TeraGrid MyProxy certificate repository (myproxy.teragrid.org) on any TG resource by using the myproxy-logon command as follows, supplying your portal username with the -l option (if different from your login on the resource from which you are issuing the command) and your portal password as the MyProxy passphrase.
  
  site/username> myproxy-logon -l <portal_username> -s myproxy.teragrid.org
  
  Enter MyProxy pass phrase: <enter portal_password>
  A proxy has been received for user username in /tmp/x509up_u#####

  NOTE: If you are used to running myproxy-init to delegate a proxy to the My Proxy server, you no longer have to do so using the process above. All authentication is performed using your portal username and password, and a long term certificate does not exist for this particular NCSA DN.

  See the User Info Proxy page for more information.

Known Issues

• The TeraGrid Visualization Gateway currently uses a host certificate issued by the DOEGrids Certificate Authority (CA). Users that have not set up their Web browser to automatically accept certificates issued by this CA will likely receive a security warning when attempting to access the Visualization Gateway. You can configure your browser to accept this certificate such that you will not receive this warning on future visits. See your browser's help for details on how to do this.
• Some services are known to not work properly with the Safari Web browser. Users should access the TeraGrid Visualization Gateway using a browser other than Safari.