Science Mesh Operators

Science Mesh Helpdesk

Helpdesk of the Science Mesh serves operators of Science Mesh sites. Note that user support remains at the sites; end user requests should generally never be directly handled by the Science Mesh.

To contact the helpdesk, e-mail to helpdesk@sciencemesh.io. You will receive an automated answer with assigned ticket number.

Helpdesk Staff 101

This section is relevant if you are an administrator of the Request Tracker queue called ScienceMesh-helpdesk.

The helpdesk is implemented as a Request Tracker queue and operated by CESNET. Mail aliases are

• helpdesk (at) sciencemesh.io, if you reply to a mail from the system, the reply gets forwarded to the ticket requestor; new mail to this address creates a new ticket,
• helpdesk-c (at) sciencemesh.io and helpdesk-com (at) sciencemesh.io for comments, i.e. internal communication among helpdesk staff related to the ticket, but not the ticket requestor.

In general, if you just “reply” to a mail from the queue, it is understood as a communication related to the ticket (don’t mess with MessageId and X-RT headers).

Web interface of the system: https://rt.cesnet.cz/. You MUST be registered (see below) to have access to the administration interface of the queue. Logging in, you will be greeted by a “Where are you from” page. When logging in, in general, choose eduGAIN (among the last items in the “Direct links” list) and search for the organisation you used for registration.

Getting Access to the RT Queue

How to get access to the administration of the ScienceMesh-helpdesk RT queue.

Note that mails to above mentioned addresses can be sent by anybody.

The administration interface of the queue is accessible to people in Virtual Organisation Science Mesh Administrators (VO_sciencemesh) in CESNET’s Perun system https://einfra.cesnet.cz/allfed/gui/.

You need to apply for membership in the organisation. Use https://einfra.cesnet.cz/allfed/registrar/?vo=VO_sciencemesh&locale=en. This is eduGAIN-enabled, so search for your home organisation identity provider. If you don’t have access to a suitable eduGAIN identity, search for “CESNET” in the search bar: you will be offered “social identities” such as Google, Linkedin, Github, Orcid, and others.

Your application will be manually reviewed and you will be assigned to appropriate groups.

Note that after you are set up by the Virtual Organisation admin, allow for up to 2 hours for propagation of your access rights to the RT system itself.

Managing the Virtual Organisation

This is only useful for virtual organisation administrators.

Management of the virtual organisation is accessible through https://einfra.cesnet.cz/allfed/gui/. Note: use only functionality you’re familiar with even if you are a Virtual Organisation admin.

Applications for membership are most easily (dis)approved via links in email notifications about the applications. Application requests are sent to the RT queue. Kindly approve only people you expect and know; note that nearly anybody from the whole Internet can apply.

Approving the application by itself doesn’t do much, it just puts the identity into VO_sciencemesh. There are two relevant groups in the virtual organisation:

• RT-ScienceMesh-helpdesk, those identities have access to RT web interface and can thus manage tickets. They WILL NOT receive all mail communication from the RT queue, though (unless explicitly CC’d).
• RT-ScienceMesh-helpdesk-watchers, those identities will receive mail from the queue. Under normal circumstances, the mesh operator should be put into both those groups. Note that changes in group membership may take up to 2 hours to be propagated into the RT system itself.

(Technically, there is also group “members”, it contains all members of the virtual organisation.)

Special Needs, Problem Solving

When everything goes blue side down with the RT Queue and/or user management there, you can contact:

• du-support (at) cesnet.cz (storage guys who typically know what to do and most likely know you as well)
• support (at) cesnet.cz (support guys who know everything, but probably don’t know you ;)).

Mail aliases in sciencemesh.io are managed by CERN.