Authentication

This page is a draft, please help complete it!

You login to the virtual machines with kerberos authentication. You will need a permanent ID called a kerberos "principal" which is looks like "xyz@FNAL.GOV", where xyz is your username. (You will have one username for all computing purposes lab.) You will have a password associated with your principal. You will use this principal and password to log into the various personal linux desktops located at Fermilab or to ssh into the collaboration interactive machines from your home institution. You typically refresh your kerberos authentication every day.

The second identity you will need is the services principal, which looks like xyz@services.fnal.gov, or often just xyz, and also has a password (different from your kerberos password). You will need this identity to log into Fermilab email, the servicedesk web site and some other services based at the lab. You would typically only use this authentication at the point you log into the service.

The third identity you will need is a CILogin certificate. This "cert" is the basis of authentication to the mu2e documents database, the computing farms, and a few other services. You will use this cert in two ways. The first way is to load it into your browser, which then gives you access to web pages and web services. The second is by using your kerberos authentication to access a copy of your certificate maintained in a remote database. You get this certificate once and then renew it only once a year.

hypernews is an archived blog and email list - for access here, you will need a hypernews password and your services password!

Finally, the mu2e internal web pages require a collaboration username and password, please ask your mu2e mentor.

If you need to do any computing in mu2e, please go ahead and start the procedure on the ComputingAccounts to create your accounts and authentication.

Under construction

When you connect to a secure web site that expects a certificate from you, that site will also present your browser with a certificate of its own. Your browser will then attempt to authenticate the certificate. If it cannot, it will open a dialog box telling you that it does not recognize the site's certificate and asking you if you would like to "add an exception". If you add the exception, then your browser will accept this site even though the browser cannot itself authenticate the certificate.

The way that your browser authenticates a certificate is that it contacts a recognized, trusted, Certificate Authority (CA). It then forwards the certificate in question to the CA and asks "Can I trust this?". If all is well, the CA replies that you can trust it. If your browser does not know the relevant CA to use, or if it does not trust the CA that the certificate says to use, then your browser will start the "add exception" dialog. Out of the box, your browser usually does not know much about which CAs to trust. In the cases you will encounter here, the relevant CA is the DOE GRID CA. This is true even for KCA certificates. You can tell your browser to accept certificates authenticated by the DOE GRID CA as follows:

1. Go to https://pki1.doegrids.org .
2. Click on the third tab from the top left (retrieval) and then on "import CA certificate chain".
3. That may itself require you to say yes to an exception, if so, do it.