Commissioning of the LHC

The LHC construction is now approaching the end and it is now time to prepare for commissioning with beam. The behavior of a proton storage ring is much different to that of LEP, which profited from strong radiation damping to keep the beam stable. Our last experience with a hadron collider at CERN goes back more than 15 years when the proton-antiproton collider last operated. Ppbar taught us a lot about the machine physics of bunched beam proton storage rings and was essential input for the design of the LHC. After a short presentation of where we stand today with machine installation and hardware commissioning, I will discuss the main machine physics issues that will have to be dealt with in the LHC.