For New HPSS Users

If you are a new user to of NERSC's HPSS system for storing your data, there are a few things you need to know. The questions and answers below will guide you through the process of starting to use HPSS.

How do I get an HPSS account?

If you have never used HPSS, call the NERSC Account Support staff at 1-800-66-NERSC, menu option 2, or 1-510-486-8612 to set up an account. Your HPSS user name will be one of your existing NERSC computer user names (if you have one).

For the archive.nersc.gov system, you will be given a temporary DCE password which you must change before you can successfully use HPSS.

For the hpss.nersc.gov system, you already have an HPSS account with your NIM username, but not all users have home directories. If you desire access to the hpss.nersc.gov (Backup HPSS) system, call the NERSC Account Support staff at 1-800-66-NERSC, menu option 2, to create your home directory.

How do I change my initial temporary password?

For the archive.nersc.gov system, you need to log into our authentication server and use the chpass command.

For the hpss.nersc.gov system, you login to NIM and select "Actions" and "Generate HPSS Token". This will generate a new encrypted password for access to HPSS, but will not actually change the stored key in NIM/LDAP. If you have security reasons for needing to change this, contact NERSC Account Support to security disable your account and we will manually reset your stored key which will invalidate all previously generated passwords.

How do I access HPSS?

You can access NERSC's HPSS systems from NERSC production platforms and from any machine that supports HSI/pftp/ftp. and the archive.nersc.gov system can be accessed by gridFTP clients as well, using GSI authentication to the parallel FTP daemon not a gridFTP server.

Why doesn't my username and password work with ftp or pftp?

For security reasons, NERSC no longer supports using clear text names and passwords for pftp or ftp. You can find out how to encrypt your password in pftp/ftp Authentication.