This tutorial provides an introduction to many aspects of an ATLAS analysis. However, it cannot cover all possible scenarios you may encounter in the course of your analysis work. There are numerous resources that you can use to seek help for any computing difficulties you have.
During the tutorial, the tutors are your first point of contact for help. If you are participating in an in-person tutorial, talk to the tutors in the room. If you are doing a remote/asynchronous tutorial, you can ask for help on the Discord server if one is provided; otherwise you can send an email to the tutors at atlas-sw-tutors-organisers@cern.ch. For any questions/issues not directly related to the tutorial material, please keep reading to find the appropriate channel to get help (though you are also welcome to ask some of these in Discord if you wish).
There are suggestions and recommendations for asking questions available here.
The majority of ATLAS internal information is documented on twiki pages. Within the twiki pages, you will find details about technical implementations, analysis and combined performance recommendations, and contact information for conveners and other experts. This tutorial makes references and provides links to many twiki pages in relevant sections, but a good place to start is the main ATLAS page:
Some of the main pages that might be useful to you are:
Some groups use non-Twiki documentation; these will generally be linked from the Twiki, so the Twiki is almost always a good starting point.
The Analysis Model Group (AMG) is responsible for developing and overseeing analysis frameworks and tools. This tutorial is under the purview of AMG. The main AMG twiki page and three useful mailing lists (all of which are also atlas-talk categories) are:
The Physics Modeling Group (PMG) is responsible for the development and validation of Monte Carlo (MC) simulation of physics processes. The simulation of physics processes that are specific to an analysis are the responsibility of the analyzers or the physics group, but PMG is responsible for giving the final approval for all production requests. Contact information is available on the PMG twiki for experts in all aspects of MC generation and a central mailing list is available for general questions.
The Statistics Forum is responsible for all recommendations and support related to statistical analysis. They provide support for numerous commonly used statistical tools and are available to help with any analysis-specific questions you may have. Contact information for experts for specific tools are available on the twiki page and there is a central statistics help mailing list (which is also an atlas-talk category)) for any questions.
For difficulties with distributed computing (running on the grid, accessing files on the grid, etc), a good first point of contact is the distributed analysis help list:
The Production and Distributed Analysis (PanDA) system is used to process computing jobs on the grid. It is covered in detail in this tutorial. Central PanDA documentation is available at:
Rucio is used to transfer data around the grid, and is also covered in this tutorial. The central Rucio documentation is available at:
CERN provides access to the HTCondor batch system (replacing the previous LXBatch system). The system’s usage will be presented in the tutorial. More details can be found on the following page:
When contacting the mailing lists please be as detailed as possible. When asking for software help, you will never be accused of providing too much detail.
Include things such as:
If log files or input files are large, share them via CERNBox.