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Setup

Please refer to the following YouTube video for first time login and setup through the portal. Accompanying written instructions are also provided in the steps below. Note that the video shows the pathway for the University Login (MyAccessID) identity provider, please refer to step 1 below for information on other identity providers.

Requirements to access portal

To access the portal, you need one of the following:

  • You are part of an active Award in one of the Awards Portals and have been added to that award by the Project Lead.
  • You have received an invitation to join a project directly on the BriCS portal.

Step 1: Log into the portal

The first step is to connect to the BriCS portal. This is at the address https://portal.isambard.ac.uk.

On the portal, click the button marked "Click here to login".

This will take you to a page where you can choose which identity provider you want to use to log in. Pick the tab below that matches your situation — most users only ever need one of these.

Choose this option if you have a University account. This will let you use your own University account to log in using MyAccessID.

You will be taken to a MyAccessID login page. Start typing in the name of your University. You will hopefully see your University appear in the list of options.

Click on your University - this will take you to your normal University login page. Log in as you would normally. This will bring you back to the BriCS portal.

If your University is not listed on that page, try the "Other Login (IdP of last resort)" tab instead.

Checking MyAccessID support at your institution

Check here for the level of MyAccessID support at your University.

Wrong email address

If you see the "Not authorised to connect" error below and your award is already active, this is the most likely cause.

Research institute supported by MyAccessID

If you have multiple email aliases, you should have been added to the award/project using the email that your organisation supplies to MyAccessID, which you can find on the MyAccessID profile page. If you have been added using a different email address, then get in touch with the Project Lead, and ask them to add you using the correct address.

You must log in using the email address with which you were added or invited onto the project.

For compliance reasons, only the Project Lead can invite people into their award or project. BriCS cannot do this on their behalf.

Please get in touch with the Project Lead and ask them to add you to the project using your correct email address.

Advice for Project Leads on project management can be found here.

Pending approval

Most additions of emails to a project will be approved automatically. However, in a small number of cases a human review will be needed before it can be approved. If this is the case, you will see an error message like the following:

Your invitation from [SENDER] is under review. We expect to review your invitation quickly (within 72 hours) and will notify you by email when your account is ready.

The expectation is that your addition to the project will be processed quickly, if it takes longer, then either email us or contact your Project Lead and ask them to raise a support ticket.

Tip

The displayed message shows who added you and which email address you used to log in. This is useful information to include in any support request.

Choose this option if you work at the AI Security Institute. Log in with your AISI Okta credentials when prompted.

If you have trouble after logging in, see Not authorised to connect or Browser issues below.

Choose this option if you work at NCC and your invitation was sent to your @nccuk.com address. Log in with your NCC credentials when prompted.

If you have trouble after logging in, see Not authorised to connect or Browser issues below.

This is a special identity provider that's only used for people who don't have a University account, or whose University does not yet support the REFEDS Research and Scholarship category.

You can only use this option if we have already set up an account for you on the AWS Identity Center. If you have an active award and need to use this login method, we will have created this account for you automatically. Please note that it may take us up to 3 working days to create the account after you join an award. The link below explains how to log in using the AWS account we have set up for you, and covers troubleshooting steps specific to this login method. If it has been more than 3 working days since you joined an award, or since your award became active, and you are still unable to log in, please email [email protected].

Set up and log in with your AWS account

This option is only for administrators, and should not be used.

Not authorised to connect

Whichever identity provider you use, you may see this error message after logging in:

You are not authorised to connect.

You can only connect if you are an authorised member of an active project.
Please get in touch with the person who invited you onto the project and make sure
that the project is still active, and that they invited you using your correct email address
[YOUR-EMAIL-ADDRESS].

Your email address will be shown in this error message, which is useful information to include in any support request.

This usually means one of two things:

  • Your award is not yet active. It can take up to 5 days for your award to become active — you will be told about this when your proposal is approved. If it has been longer than 5 days and you still see this error, please email us.
  • You logged in with the wrong email address. This is the more likely cause if your award is already active, especially if you used University Login (MyAccessID) option to login — see the "Wrong email address" advice in the University Login tab above.

Browser issues

In some cases, users have experienced issues logging into the portal due to browser cookies, regardless of which identity provider they used above. An attempt to log in via a browser private window is usually a good test before contacting support. If it works in a private window this indicates a need to reset your cookies for the website in your browser profile. See the following guides for information on how to clear cookies in popular web browsers:

Step 2: Accepting Policies

The Bristol Centre for Supercomputing (BriCS) has access terms and policies that must be accepted before you can use any of its services. As soon as you log in, you will be presented with a series of access terms and policies that you need to accept to continue.

Please click the link to open the Access Terms in a new tab. Take time to read the access terms and policies. It is very important for compliance reasons that you read and understand, and that we have a clear record of your acceptance.

Once you have read the access terms, type "accept" into the text box, and click the "Submit" button.

You will have to read and accept at least two policies, i.e. after accepting the access terms you will also have to read and accept the Acceptable Use Policy and the Data Privacy Policy.

The date and time that you accepted the policies will be recorded with your account, so you shouldn't need to accept them when you log in again. However, if there are any new policies or anything changes then you will be shown the policies and will need to accept again.

Step 3: Accepting the Invitation

Do I need to do this?

This step only applies if you were invited directly to a project on the BriCS Portal, rather than through an Awards Portal. If you joined via an Awards Portal, skip ahead to Step 4.

Now you have logged in you should see the BriCS Portal. However, your account isn't yet associated with any projects. This is because you haven't accepted the invitation.

Find the email from "[email protected]" that contained your invitation. Note that it may have gone into your spam folder.

Click on the "Accept Invitation" link in the email (or copy the link and paste it into the address bar in your browser). Make sure that you use the same browser that you used to log in above (or else you will need to log in again).

You will now see a box asking if you want to accept the invitation.

Click "Accept invitation" if you want to accept and join the project.

Click "Cancel invitation" if, for any reason, and after all of the above, you decide that you don't want to use any of the centre's services, and do not want to join the project. Note, cancelling the invitation will block your account. Your data will be retained as described in the Data Privacy Policy for a period of time to satisfy cybersecurity and compliance requirements, after which it will be deleted.

Accidentally cancelled invitation

Get in touch with the person who invited you and ask them to send the invitation again if you accidentally clicked "Cancel invitation".

Step 4: Choosing a UNIX username

Now that your account is ready, and you are a member of a project, you next need to choose a UNIX username. You will need to do this before you can log into any of BriCS's systems.

Your UNIX username is an important requirement to let you access BriCS's systems. It is used to create the name of the low-level accounts that you will use on the supercomputers.

Your UNIX short name should be a short, unique name for you. It should only contain lower-case letters and digits, and must start with a letter. It can be between 5-20 characters long.

Once set, your UNIX username cannot be changed. Make sure to choose a UNIX username that you are happy for other members of your project and for other people you work with to see.

How to set your UNIX username

  • Log into the portal.

  • In the top-right of the screen you will see your user button. This is a button with your name on. Clicking on this will open the user actions menu.

  • Click on "User dashboard" to go to your User dashboard.

  • Once there, make sure "Edit" tab at the top of the page is selected.

  • Scroll down this page until you see the "UNIX User name" row.

  • Click on the pen icon on the right. This will open a box in which you can enter your UNIX username, as described above.

UNIX usernames are permanent

You cannot change your UNIX username after it has been set. Please take time to choose a name that you are happy with.

Once you have chosen, click the "Submit" button to save your choice.

You should now be able to log into the services that require a UNIX username.

Tip

If you still see errors saying that your user short name is empty, or your UNIX username is not set, then you may need to log out and then log back in again. Open the user actions menu in the portal (as above) and click on "Log out" to log out. Then, you will also need to do a federated logout. Go to the federated account page and click on your user button at the top right of the screen. Click on "Sign out" in the menu to log out. If you still see errors after completing these steps, then raise a ticket on the support desk.

What's next?

Now that you have logged in and accepted the policies, you can start using the services provided by the Bristol Centre for Supercomputing.

What to do next depends on what services you have access to and plan to use. If you are a Project Lead (formally called a Principal Investigator) have a look at the Manage project page to add users to your project. If you would like to use the supercomputers have a look a the Logging into BriCS supercomputers below.

  • Login

    Logging into BriCS Supercomputers with SSH and clifton.

  • Manage project

    Manage membership of your award or project (Project Leads only).