Help! I cannot access RDW

Losing access to RDW is a common issue that users of the HPC facilities raise.

Normally this isn't really a problem with the service, but a peculiar feature of how the Campus Research Data Warehouse is implemented - remember; RDW is not part of the HPC facility.

To access the /rdw/ filesystem tree you must have authenticated to the HPC facility with your University IT account and password. Most users start using the HPC in this way, but many change to using SSH keys later - for obvious reasons; it is much simpler to login and it saves typing passwords all of the time.

However, when you login with your SSH keys you are not authenticated with your University IT account and password.

If you think you have lost access to the /rdw/ directory, first run this command on a login node to check:

$ klist

If you are successfully authenticated with your University credentials, you should be able to run klist and see output similar to below:

$ klist
Ticket cache: KEYRING:persistent:12345:12345
Default principal: n1234@CAMPUS.NCL.AC.UK

Valid starting     Expires            Service principal
01/01/25 16:00:00  02/04/25 01:00:00  krbtgt/CAMPUS.NCL.AC.UK@CAMPUS.NCL.AC.UK
	renew until 03/04/25 16:00:00
$

Where n1234 is replaced by your actual University IT account username. If you see the above and still cannot access /rdw/ then you may have a genuine problem with RDW. Contact us in this case.

However, if you instead see the following output:

$ klist
klist: Credentials cache keyring 'persistent:12345:12345' not found
$

Then this is the source of your problem.

To fix the missing klist credentials cache, run the kinit command, as shown:

$ kinit
Password for n1234@CAMPUS.NCL.AC.UK:
$

Enter your normal University IT account password, and then run klist again. You should see that your credentials are now listed. As long as there are no problems with the RDW facility, this should resolve your problem.

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