The basic account is a UNIX shell account accessible via SSH. This network account will let you access designated machines in the developer network. Along with the shell account you also get up to 10 GB of data storage, access to high performance compilers, basic development tools like version control systems (svn, git, etc) and shell text editors.

Once you have an account, you can access the developer network by connecting via SSH to:

• developer.sbgrid.org - Scientific Linux 6 x86_64

This machine (internally named sbgrid-dev-architect) is the only external facing host on the network, and it hosts your home directory and acts as the SSH bastion host for the network.

The following are the always-on operating system/hardware combinations. They are generally kept at the latest point release (e.g. OS X 10.5.7, CentOS 5.3):

If you need a high power linux host for testing either large memory or multi-CPU functionality, you can use sbgrid-dev-lusitania, a 48-core 64 GB RAM machine that runs our virtual machine infrastructure.

We have the latest versions of the Intel, Portland and Absoft (PPC) compilers:

• Intel 12.0, 11.1, 10.1 (ifc, ifort) - any linux host, OS X Intel 10.5/6 hosts
• Portland 10.9, 10.2, 9.0-1 (pgcc, pgf77/90/95) - sbgrid-dev-architect, sbgrid-dev-flex
• Absoft 9.5 (acc, afc) - sbgrid-dev-cotterpin

There is a configuration file for sh-compatible shells that will enable the compilers and their environmental settings:

 $ . /build/conf/buildenv.sh

Then you can use the 'build' function to control your compiler settings:

$ build help
build: a shell function for controlling compilers

Usage: build (help|32|64|list)

  help    This help message
  32      Configure 32-bit compilers
  64      Configure 64-bit compilers
  list    List available compilers

Additionally, there are other operating systems available as virtual machines that can be enabled (OpenSuSE, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc), and some additional hardware that can be made available (Sun SPARC, IRIX MIPS, etc) on request.

Graphical access to the machines may be available through Apple Remote Desktop, VNC or the NoMachine desktop sharing client. Other tools could be made available if necessary as well. The whole thing's a bit of an experiment, really, so email us at bugs@sbgrid.org, and we'll see what we can work out.

Thanks for your interest in participating in the SBGrid Developer Network.

In order to be eligible for an account, you must have software in the SBGrid software suite or be planning to make your software available through SBGrid. This requirement limits accounts to developers of scientific software used in structural biology and related disciplines.

That's the only requirement for new accounts. In return for access to these resources, you must agree to not abuse the resources for:

• sending spam
• cracking our computers or other peoples' computers
• other activity which is illegal in the USA or your country

And you agree to take reasonable precautions to maintain the security of your password and account by not sharing this information with other people.

On our end, we will:

• take reasonable precautions to maintain the security of the network, accounts and data
• make occasional backups of account data (but don't count on it!)
• attempt to maintain a high availability of the developer resources

We reserve the right to close accounts at any time for any reason.

Still interested? Great! We want to work with you, so please email bugs@sbgrid.org with your account request, and we'll get back to you as soon as possible.