Getting Started

If you have never logged in to the Cyber School Gitlab or used a named account on the VTA, you probably need to register for an account. Anyone who is a 17-series service member is eligible for an account and will automatically be approved. Other requests are handled on a case-by-case basis.

By registering for an account, you get:

  • Permanent access to the USACYS Gitlab as an external user (you must explicitly request access to projects that you wish to contribute to)

  • Permanent access to your own VTA project with:

    • 20 Cores

    • 10 Instances

    • 50G RAM

    • 1TB block and object storage

  • The ability to log in to any USACYS workstation using these same credentials.

For more information on maximizing the impact of your VTA account, see the VTA component of this guide

Registration

To register for an account, head to https://register.cybbh.space.

You will be prompted to present a client certificate and key - use your common access card email certificate. If you choose your non-email certificate, the system will be unable to determine your email address and throw an error asking you to clear your TLS cache and try again.

Once you choose the correct certificate and enter your PIN, you will be presented with an acceptable use policy outlining the usage agreement for the information system. Read the AUP, ensure that the fields that populated at the bottom of the screen have your accurate information, and then click on Create Account.

If you happen to forget your password, you can also use this same page to reset it, just click on Reset Password.

If all goes well, once you click on create account, a job will run in the background that provisions your account automatically and displays a temporary password that you can use to login, along with further instructions. Follow the displayed message in order to successfully log on to the version control system.

There is a bug in the password display portion of the initialization function. If the randomly-chosen system password happens to have \n or other similar line-break syntax in it, The output of the initialization script will be incorrect. The various lines of output will run together, and your password will appear to contain what should be the following line. If this happens, hit the Reset Password button until a new password is generated and properly displayed.

Logging in

Once you have set a new password on the IPA system, you will be able to log in across the various services.

To log in to gitlab, head here.

Once you’re at the landing page, log in with the username and password that you were just issued. Your username is your EEmail address minus your status identifier and domain (e.g. if your email address is john.q.smith23.mil@mail.mil, your login is john.q.smith23) Once logged in, you can feel free to browse the available projects. If you find something that you wish to contribute to, please read the project-specific contribution guidance in the drawer on the lower left as well as the general contribution guidelines and the style guide.

To log in to the VTA, head here.

Your domain will be ipa, and your username/password will be the same as you used for gitlab. There might be a slight delay between account registration and VTA activation, so if you receive a message about not being assigned to any projects, come back in a few hours and try again. If you still have issues, head to the VTA Slack and ask for help.

At this point, you should be able to log in to all of the various systems. You should read the General Guidelines next.