CMT and Athena at NIKHEF

When starting with Atlas software it is required at NIKHEf there are some settings that are required. On this page we will see the basic steps required to get the Athena environment set-up working. We will use release 9.0.4 at NIKHEF on a RH7.3 machine.

Note:

     Commands are listed in red. 
     Files and things to add/remove are listed in blue.

1. Setting up the 9.0.4 environment

a) Log onto a RedHat 7.3 machine

You can check the operating system on your maching by typing cat /etc/issue. At NIKHEF njord is such a machine for example.

b) Create a user account on the project disk (only once)

cd /project/atlas/users

mkdir <your_login_name>

cd <your_login_name>

c) Set up the environment for the 9.0.4 release (each new shell)

To set up all environment variables related to the 9.0.4 release source the following file

source /project/atlas/nikhef/setup/nikhef_setup_9.0.4.csh

For each new shell these variables need to be defined so the best thing is to put this line in your .cshrc file located in your home directory.

d) check you have everything correctly set-up

-> check you have the correct version of CMT

echo $CMTROOT

You should find: /data/atlas/offline/9.0.4/CMT/v1r16p20040901

-> check you have the correct version of the release

echo $SITEROOT

You should find: /data/atlas/offline/9.0.4

2. Checking out and compiling the TestRelease Package

a) Check out the TestRelease package

We will get the TestRelease package from the CVS server at CERN. To access CVS, we need to have a valid kerberos token at CERN:

klog <your_AFS_login_name>@cern.ch

Then check out the TestRelease package using CMT

cmt co TestRelease

b) Configure the TestRelease package

The TestRelease package gives us acces to the main ATLAS program Athena. Before compiling it, we first need to configure it to our needs. Go to the cmt directory of this package:

cd TestRelease/TestRelease-00-00-18/cmt/

You will need to make the following changed to the requirements file:

change

use AtlasRelease AtlasRelease-* to

#use AtlasRelease AtlasRelease-*

In the section starting with the line

# Setup the run-time environment

add the following lines:

use AthenaRunTime AthenaRunTime-00-* Control

use AthExHelloWorld AthExHelloWorld-00-* Control/AthenaExamples

use Pythia_i Pythia_i-00-* Generators

use Herwig_i Herwig_i-00-01-* Generators

use Atlfast Atlfast-01-* Simulation

use TruthExamples TruthExamples-00-* Generators/GenAnalysisTools

c) compiling the TestRelease package

We are now going to compile the TestRelease package. In the cmt directory type:

cmt config

source setup.csh

gmake

You are ready for a real analysis

Note: This is typically done for each package you check out and normally you will now go to the run directory of this package (same depth as the cmt directory), define your joboption file and run athena.