The SPIRES-HEP system serves the worldwide High-Energy Physics community,
providing a valuable resource for information about research and publications.
The SPIRES-HEP system was started at SLAC in 1974, and has since grow into a
collaboration of many institutions and mirror sites coordinated by SLAC. If
you and your institution would like to join the list of mirror sites, we have
prepared this outline of the requirements and responsibilities involved.
If you are interested, please contact Travis Brooks, SPIRES Scientific Databases
Manager at 1.650.926.3426, or via email at
travis@slac.stanford.edu.
The SPIRES-HEP system is built on the SPIRES Database Management System.
This is a robust database management system that was developed at
Stanford University and is the corner-stone system for managing
the information in SPIRES-HEP on Unix platforms. Additionally, there is a
web-interface to SPIRES that requires a web server and web server software.
The mirror site must be up and running about 99% of the time. This should
be maintained on a "best effort" basis.
Institutional Requirements
- Unix-SPIRES Collaboration. Institutions must be members of the
Unix-SPIRES Collaboration.
- Travel Support. Institutions must commit sufficient funds yearly
so that the mirror site administrator and/or technical administrator can
travel to SLAC for a minimum of one week per year to work on mirror-site
and SPIRES-HEP development issues with the SLAC SPIRES staff.
- Contact Person. Your institution must provide us with a contact
person. It would be helpful if this person also functioned as the technical
administrator, but that is not a requirement. We will need name, phone
number, address, and email address of this person. This person will work
with the SLAC staff on all issues relating to the mirror site and be the
interface back to your institution.
Technical Requirements
- Hardware. Machine running the UNIX or LINUX operating systems with a
minimum of 128 MB Ram and 6 to 10 GB of hard drive space available for
SPIRES and the SPIRES-HEP databases. Big endian machines (most Sun, HP) are much
faster with Unix SPIRES and this is preferred. However, little endian machines
(LINUX) can be used.
- Networking. Your machine should have a reliable connection to
the Internet that runs at least at T1 speeds if not faster. All
installations are done over the Internet, and require transfers of large
amounts of files. Also, we must be assured of at least moderate access
speeds for users of your mirror site.
- Software. You must have ftp, ssh, the GNU software bundle
(including gcc and gunzip), a web server software package (Apache), perl and rsync
(both free).
- Support. You must provide us with the name and contact
information for your UNIX administrator.
- Web Server Support. The web interface to SPIRES-HEP requires a
web server machine and web server software. You can either run the web
server software on the same machine as the SPIRES database management
system, or you may utilize your institutions web server. Installing the
SPIRES web interface onto a web server is very simple and does not have
much impact on the web server itself. It is desirable to have the web
server software located on your institution's web server, as then we are
assured of the reliability of that service. You will need about 15Kb of
free space for the files related to the web server.
Administrative Requirements
- Technical Administrator. Mirror site must have a designated
technical administrator. This is the person that will work with the SLAC
staff to install and/or update databases. It is preferable that this person
also be the site contact person, but it is not a requirement.
- Statistics. Mirror site must run statistics gathering programs
on a daily and monthly basis that will write out statistics pages to the
web. These usage statistics help SLAC manage the database's improvements
and future plans.
- Technical knowledge. Technical administrator must have fair
knowledge of UNIX and be willing to develop basic knowledge of SPIRES. The
person will have to run nightly updates to the SPIRES-HEP databases, update
other parts of the mirror system, and generally maintain a stable computing
environment that ensures the mirror is running and available on a "best
effort" basis.
SPIRES News |
Other Databases |
Search HEP |
Questions
SLAC |
Stanford University |
SLAC Library
|
Last Updated: 8 March 2005
Owner: P. Kreitz
at SLAC
File: /library/spires-hep-mirror.html
|