LHCb commissioning and readiness for first data

Abstract

LHCb has been installed by spring 2008, followed by intensive testing and commissioning of the system in order to be ready for first data taking. Despite the horizontal geometry of the LHCb detector it was possible to collect over one million useful cosmic events that allowed a first time alignment of the sub-detectors. Moreover events from beam dumps during the LHC synchronisation tests provided very useful data for further time and spacial alignment of the detector. Here we present an overview of our commissioning activities, the current status and an outlook on the startup in 2009.