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Your username identifies you to the CS&E, CSE and University communities, and to the Internet community as a whole. You are solely responsible for how your account is used, regardless of whether or not you have given another person permission to use your account.
If someone needs access to CSE resources, even on a temporary basis, then that person should contact Systems Staff and arrange for his/her own account.
If someone else offers you use of an account for which you do not have authorization, decline. Also, if you discover someone else's password, do not use it. In either case, you should report the event to the Systems Staff operator.
Anyone who knows your password can use your account.
If you leave your workstation unattended and unlocked while you are logged in, anyone who sits down at the keyboard can use your account. Locking the workstation allows you to enter your password to unlock it when you return. Do not leave the workstation locked and unattended for more than 15 minutes. You may return to find yourself logged out.
UNIX: Use the "xlock" command at the prompt (type "man xlock" for more information).
Windows: Press the "ctrl" "alt" and "del" buttons together, and select the "lock workstation" option.
Use of your account to subvert or change the system endangers the security of the entire network. Any attempt will be interpreted as a hostile action and your account will be closed. Reactivation of your account may require that you explain your actions to the Associate Dean of Student Affairs and/or an ITICC member. This wastes everyone's time and creates hard feelings; don't do it.
The sooner a problem is known about, the sooner it can be fixed.
Some indications include files you didn't create, directories with unusual names (like " "), wildcard entries in your ~/.rhosts file, and last login times you don't recognize.
Systems Staff is available to answer questions and address problems.
(back to top)Peer-to-peer software is generally considered unacceptable to use on the University network except in rare situations. We ask that users refrain from using peer-to-peer software in the workplace.
If the usage is both legal and directly related to their work, users may request special permission from the Systems Operator. Please specify time(s) and machine(s) for the requested P2P software usage.
If you run a job that requires a lot of CPU time, you should nice the process. The "nice" command is used to start a process with different priority. So any job that will take a long time to run should be run as:
nice -n nice_value command arguments
where nice_value is a number from 1-19 (larger value → lower priority), command is the command you want to run, and arguments are the arguments you pass to nice.
For more information about nice see the manual pages on nice (man nice).
(back to top)There are two groups of machines:
General users should use the publicly accessible machines to run long term processes.
The computer servers available for this purpose are:
A list of machines available for remote access can also be found on the CS&E Instructional Computing Resources page.
If you are using the Grad Lab machines to run long term processes then you should do the following:
Attention Grad Lab users: Please do NOT reboot the machines just because you think they are slow. This can interrupt other peoples’ processes running on those machines and it could also corrupt the file systems on the machines badly enough that will require reinstalling the machines, which helps no one.
If you feel a system is slow, send an e-mail to operator [at] cs.umn.edu or call 612-625-0876 to report the problem. The Systems Staff can determine if there is a problem and help to resolve it. There are very few problems that require a reboot.
CSE Labs machines are to be used primarily for instructional purposes, but they can be used for research purposes if your advisor obtains permission from Professor Paul Strykowski (pstry [at] umn [dot] edu), Associate Dean for student affairs. Your processes should not interrupt normal class activities.
There are some computer servers available for running long term processes. They are:
There is also an 8 machine ‘candy bar cluster’ in CSE Labs consisting of 8 SunFire V210s with 2GB of memory and 2 processors each. They are:
A list of machines available for remote access can also be found at CSE Machine Listing.
There has been mention of the 'itclus' machines in CSE Labs. These machines are for specialized class purposes only and not for running long term processes. These machines are being used for a particular class this semester and we will limit access to them if we have to. Do NOT run any processes on these machines unless you are in the class that is using these machines.
If you want to run processes for a class that would take long time, you should do the following: