Rather than storing your X.509 credentials (certificate and private key) on each machine you use, you can store them in a MyProxy repository and retrieve a proxy credential from the MyProxy repository when needed.

To store a credential in the MyProxy repository, run the myproxy-init command on a computer where your Grid credentials are located. For example:

        $ myproxy-init -a -s myproxy.ncsa.uiuc.edu
        Your identity: /C=US/O=National Computational Science Alliance/CN=Jim Basney
        Enter GRID pass phrase for this identity:
        Creating proxy ........................................... Done
        Your proxy is valid until Fri Sep 13 13:52:56 2002
        Enter MyProxy Pass Phrase:
        Verifying password - Enter MyProxy Pass Phrase:
        A proxy valid for 168 hours (7.0 days) for user jbasney now exists on myproxy.ncsa.uiuc.edu.
      

The myproxy-init command prompts first for the pass phrase of your private key (similar to grid-proxy-init) and then prompts twice for a new pass phrase to use to secure the credentials on the MyProxy server. By default, the credential is stored under your Unix username (jbasney in the example above) for 7 days and can be used to retrieve credentials with 12 hour lifetimes. Command-line tools below lists all the available options for the myproxy-init command.

Once you've stored a credential in the MyProxy repository, you can retrieve a proxy credential whenever you need one with the myproxy-logon command. For example:

        $ myproxy-logon -s myproxy.ncsa.uiuc.edu
        Enter MyProxy Pass Phrase:
        A proxy has been received for user jbasney in /tmp/x509up_u500
      

The myproxy-logon command prompts for the pass phrase you set previously with myproxy-init, retrieves a proxy credential for you, and stores it in the correct default location for use with other Globus Toolkit programs. The Command-line tools lists all the available options for the myproxy-logon command.