UNIX Policy/Account Request
Appropriate Use
The Eller UNIX Cluster (hereafter also called
"the cluster"), managed by Eller
Information Technology Services (Eller IT) is available for
instructional and research use. Users of the cluster have shell
access and can invoke various compilers. Other typical uses include
email, web page development, electronic file transfers, access to
newsgroups, and telnet access. A LYNX based menu system for ease
of use is also available. The use of computers, computer systems
and networks is a privilege granted to members of the Eller College
community. By accessing the cluster, users agree that they are aware
of and adhere to all policies noted in the Eller
IT Computing and Network Usage Policy and in this document.
Eller IT reserves the right to temporarily or permanently deny
access to any computer account, computing lab or other Eller computing
or network resource maintained by Eller IT that has been misused.
Misuse includes but is not limited to:
- account/password sharing
- non-academic usage
- false ownership or identification misrepresentation
- malicious or unauthorized hacking and/or intrusion
- electronic harassment
- forged electronic mail
- nonacademic use of the Eller data communications network
- making unauthorized copies of any copyright protected software,
regardless of source.
[JUN2001]
Account Eligibility
Available to University of Arizona
Eller College of Management
faculty staff, and graduate students for as long as they are enrolled
in business school courses. Accounts can be requested using the
New User Account Request Form Wepage. Typically, user accounts requested
using the New User Account Online Request Form Webpage will be available
for use 1-2 days after the request is approved by the appropriate
Eller College department. Accounts are also available to visiting
scholars and temporary employees when is authorized and approved
by the appropriate Eller College department head. Eller College
departments can request the establishment of one departmental account
on the entire cluster for administrative use, development of departmental
web pages, and general departmental e-mail access by completing
an application form.
[AUG2000]
Alumni Access
Eller Alumni access to the cluster is available, but must be requested
and has resource limitations. Alumni accounts should not be used
as a repository for LISTSERV mailings.
[JUN2001]
Obtaining an Account
The Eller Unix Cluster serves the needs of faculty, staff, researchers
and graduate students of the Eller College and is not intended for
undergraduate or non-Eller College use. The account request process
has been modified and is now completely online.
- Complete the online
request form. When you finish and click the "I agree"
box, a notification will be sent to the authorized
departmental contact.
- When the request is approved, notification is sent to Eller
IT to create the account.
- After the account is created, notification for the new account
is returned to the authorized
departmental contact.
New account creation generally occurs within one working day after
approval. While the Eller IT staff or the authorized departmental
contact can verify that an account has been created, the you may
also try logging onto the cluster using the account name and password
you were given during the request process. You were encouraged to
print this screen out for your reference.
* If you experience problems please check with your authorized
departmental contact. Account creations as well as any necessary
changes in the standard for account names and passwords are conveyed
to them.
The Eller IT Systems Staff reserves the right to refuse an account
creation request if the applicant does not meet one of the following
criteria:
- A member of the Eller Faculty or Staff
- A Graduate Student of the Eller College
- Approved by the department/college
- Other Graduate student taking MIS classes.
[JUN2001]
Required Approvals
Account request must be approved by the appropriate
authorized departmental contact before they are created.
[AUG2000]
Account Names
Account names are generally derived from the name of the applicant.
These are limited to eight(8) alphanumeric characters and are case
sensitive.
[AUG2000]
Resource Allocations
Disk Quotas
Disk space is never a plentiful resource on any system despite
its constant decrease in cost. Limits are imposed regarding the
amount of space each individual user may consume by enforcing disk
"quotas." Disk quotas are boundaries monitored by the
UNIX operating system that keep an individual from consuming more
disk space than was allocated.
Quotas are in place for three reasons. The first reason is to ensure
that each user receives a fair share of disk space. The second reason
is to allow the Eller IT Systems Staff to monitor current disk usage
and plan for future requirements. The third reason is to encourage
users to use resources judiciously and to discourage unnecessary
misuses of precious resources.
Quotas are initially established based on the type of account created.
The following table outlines the initial quota assigned to accounts:
| Eller Faculty |
100 MB permanent disk space |
| Eller Staff |
20 MB permanent disk space |
| Eller PhD Students |
50 MB permanent disk space |
| Eller Masters Students |
25 MB permanent disk space |
| MBA Students |
20 MB permanent disk space |
| Other UA Grad. Students |
5 MB permanent disk space |
| Eller Alumni |
2 MB permanent disk space |
| Visitors |
10 MB permanent disk space |
Quota adjustments are handled on a case by case basis.
Requests for increases in account quotas should be sent via E-Mail
to:
support@eller.arizona.edu
The Eller IT Systems Staff recommends that, before quota increases
are requested, the individual:
- purge the account of unnecessary file versions
- delete unnecessary files (eg., *.tar, *.zip, etc.)
- delete any old mail
Access to temporary disk is available.
Current system configurations such as processor specifications
and memory are available at Eller
Unix Cluster - Hardware Webpage.
[AUG2000]
Account Expiration/Archival
Your account does not stay around forever. Account archival occurs
at the end of the Fall, Spring and Summer semesters. Account archival
is one of many regularly scheduled maintenance activities.
Archival is the process of storing inactive and/or expired cluster
accounts to off-line storage (usually tape). Accounts which have
been inactive for a period of greater than six (6) months or have
expired are subject to archival.
Archived accounts are stored for a period of 2 years from the point
of archival. After the 2 year period, archived accounts are disposed
of and the media used to store them is reused.
Archived accounts may be restored at the request of the original
owner. However the Eller IT Systems Staff reserves the right to
deny such a request.
The owner of an archived account may also request a copy (on magnetic
tape) of the archive for a cost.
Any request to process archived accounts must be accompanied by
picture identification of the account owner. Requests may be mailed
to the applicable Eller Department provided a photocopy of a picture
identification accompanies the request. Telephone requests to process
archived accounts will not be honored unless the identification
of the caller can be verified.
[JUN2001]
SLIP/PPP Access
The Eller.Arizona.EDU cluster does not allow the running of SLIP
or PPP emulators, or any related software. Anyone running these
directly on the cluster will be warned. Failure to comply with the
warning may result in the temporary or permanent removal of your
account from the system. This policy does not have anything to do
with accessing your account by using legitimate SLIP or PPP services
provided by CCIT Telecommunications or any commercial Internet Service
Provider (ISP).
[AUG2000]
IRC/BBS Access
The Eller.Arizona.EDU cluster is provided to users primarily for
instructional and reserach purposes. Eller IT does not support the
use of IRC, BBS, or other "chat" or "bulletin-board"
related programs on this system. Running these types of programs
will result in the loss of your account privileges. The system manager
reserves the right to kill any process that adversely affects the
system or is in violation of this policy.
For clients at UA/Eller College who need access to IRC, the student
Hardware and Computing Knowledge Society (HACKS) has a computer
which allows IRC for a fee of $5 per semester. For a free 7 day
trial period and information on joining HACKS:
telnet irc.hacks.arizona.edu
login: addacct
HACKS also runs a BBS that is open to all University students and
employees:
telnet bbs.arizona.edu
login: bbs
[AUG2000]
User Responsibilities
Users of the Eller.Arizona.EDU cluster share an implicit responsibility
to themselves and to others who share the college's computing and
network resources.
The Eller IT Group feels that the following represent, at a minimum,
your responsibility.
KEEP YOUR ACCOUNT PURGED OF UNNEEDED FILES
Many of us maintain files that are not necessary. While you have
to be the judge of which files are critical/important to you, there
are some files that are generally not necessary to keep around.
Such files are usually temporary files generated as a result of
programming language compilations, mail, etc.
DELETE UNNEEDED MAIL MESSAGES
Mail messages are perhaps the biggest culprit for unnecessary disk
space consumption. Many people do not realize that once a NEW mail
message is read, if it is not explicitly deleted or filed, it gets
stored in a MAIL file called MAIL. It will stay in the MAIL file
until you manually delete it. There is no magic in determining which
mail messages could/shouldn't be deleted. This is something that
you will have to do manually.
SUBMIT CPU INTENSIVE JOBS IN BATCH MODE
If you plan on running a program that you expect will take a long
time to run - RUN IT IN BATCH MODE. Typical examples are programs
that do simulations and mathematically intense solutions. If possible,
run such jobs in BATCH MODE during evening hours. BATCH MODE is
designed to run at a lower interrupt priority thus giving needed
resources to people doing interactive work. See the Unix manual
pages on the at and batch commands (man at or man batch). [JUN2001]
COMPOSE NON-COMMON PASSWORDS
There are many suggestions for password composition:
- Most UNIX system passwords are currently limitted to 8 characters-in-length.
Eller IT advises using AT LEAST an 8 character-in-length password.
- Some would say that placing at least one or more numbers in
your password makes it harder to remember. Numbers in passwords
make them exponentially harder to guess.
The Eller IT Group recommends that you use two unrelated words
separated by one or more numbers. For example, T1ME4fun might
be easy to remember. Note the number 1 in place of the letter
I.
- To make an even stronger password, use upper/lower case, numbers,
and a symbol. Many symbols are valid characters for passwords:
!@#$%^&*().
- DO NOT USE your account name, your name, or your friend's name.
Names are too easy to guess.
- The same advice applies to those foreign students. Many password
guessing routines have extensive Spanish as well as other language
dictionaries. Today's password cracking routines will, in time,
resolve even passwords with mixed case and two numbers.
RESET YOUR PASSWORD REGULARLY
You can reset your password at any time. Frequent password changes
will keep your account much safer provided your choice in a password
is a good one.
DO NOT SHARE YOUR PASSWORD/ACCOUNT WITH OTHERS
NEVER share an account with others. You would be surprised at the
number of security breaches due to a friend leaving your password
on a piece of paper in the terminal access room. SHARING accounts
is strictly forbidden. If you share your account you may lose it.
LOG YOURSELF OFF WHEN FINISHED
You should get in the habit of logging off the system when your
work is done. This is not only to protect your personal account
data but also to protect others using the system.
DO NOT WASTE PRINTER RESOURCES
Many departments provide their faculty, staff and students with
access to printer services. The majority of these print services
are laser printers. While this provides improved print quality,
we have found that people often abuse the service.
DO NOT USE printers as photocopying machines. Print a single copy
of your report, etc. and then take it to a photocopy machine and
copy it. If you print something, be responsible enough to pick it
up. When you pick it up, please leave the printer as well as the
surroundings in the same condition you expect to find it in (on-line
with excess paper tossed in the recycling bin). Toner cartridges
and laser quality paper are extremely expensive compared to other
printer resources. DO NOT USE THEM UNWISELY. Departments have limited
budgets to work with. Once the supplies have been depleted in a
given year, you might be forced to live without this luxury.
PICK UP AFTER YOURSELF
Many faculty, staff, and students use the same facilities. The facilities
are costly to maintain. These are your facilities to use. DO NOT
ABUSE THEM! DO NOT leave paper from printouts laying around. If
you no longer need the printout, dispose of it in the appropriate
recycling bin.
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