Rules, Policies, & Obligations for Department Computer Users

General User Rules

1. Read these rules, failure to follow them can result in suspension of your account, or disconnection of your network. These policies can change, so check back once a quarter.

2. Read your electronic mail at least once a week. If you don't read it on stat, forward it to where you read e-mail.

3. Any request or action that may change the operation of any facet of the system, or that will take a large amount or continuing amount of resources, must go through the Computer Committee Chair.

4. All new hardware that is to be used in the Department is to approved by the Computer Support staff. If it is not, then we reserve the right to limit our support of it. Including if it gets connected to the Department network.

5. If software is provided for a class for students outside the Department, the instructor is responsible for collecting license agreements and distributing software.

6. We do not purchase software for personal/home machines, or provide software that would violate site license agreements.

Login Account Policies

1. User accounts are non-transferable. You are responsible for the security of your own account, and for what is done with your account. Your account is for your use only.

2. Old class accounts are deleted after finals week.

3. Users who leave the department, and are no longer affiliated with the department, will have their accounts deleted. You will receive at least two weeks warning via e-mail.

4. Guest accounts need to be renewed once per year. Mail will be sent to the sponsor and/or guest to verify the status of the account. Guest accounts whose sponsor determines are not needed will be deleted. On the sponsor's request, the files in the guest account revert to the sponsor. Also the sponsor can request specific relevant file from the account.

5. Excessively large mail files (over 400 megabytes) are not permitted. After attempts to notify the recipient, further mail will be stopped, or existing mail moved to a folder.

General Machine Policies

1. To provide administration we need complete access to personal machines in the building, for example, no BIOS passwords, etc.

2. Desktop machines will not be backed up. We only back up central servers.

3. Machines must remain on at all times, for patches and license updates.

4. The machine must keep up to date with virus and OS updates. Computer Support can help you connect to our automatic update area for Windows.

5. Any machine in violation of these policies, or degrading network security or performance, will result in either: the termination of network for that entire office, or impounding of the offending computer, until the incident can be reviewed.

6. We provide very limited support for home machines.

Linux Machine Specific Policies

If you want to run Linux, and be connected to the department network, there are the following conditions:

1. The machine will run Red Hat Linux, and be installed by the support staff.

2. The support staff will be the only people with root on the machine. To provide administration we need complete access to the machine.

3. There will be BIOS and GRUB passwords preventing booting off floppy or CD.

4. Dual booting is not supported. If you must run Windows at the same time, you will have to buy VMWare, Windows can be installed in VMWare. (Linux in VMWare, or similar, is not allowed.)

Windows / Macintosh Administrator Rights Policies

1. We require administrator privileges on all Department Windows / Macintosh machines, however those rights can be shared, as follows:

2. On request Faculty and Staff can have local Administrator privileges on their Windows or Macintosh machine. However, any problems on these machines will result in an increased probability of support resorting to a reinstall to fix problems; resetting the machine back only with software we originally installed on it.

3. The user is responsible for adhering to Department and University security policies. This is by not disabling any security, and by periodically checking to make sure all security is working.

4. Under no circumstances will privileges be granted that will potentially compromise other users' data, or grant access to shared machines that can impact other users.

5. Appeals to this policy can be addressed to the Departmental Computer Committee.

Unix Process Rules

1. Each user can run at most two background process at any given time, on any two machine. If this is going to be on an individual's machine you must get their permission and respect their wishes. Exceptions can be made to this policy for shorter jobs when the compute machines are lightly loaded.

2. Each user can run at most one process at any given time, on the entire network, that uses a license manager. (Currently no packages have a low number of licenses.)

3. Any process that will run more than fifteen minutes, needs to be niced to a value of 10. This can be accomplished when starting the process by: nice +10 command, or while the program is running by renice +10 -u your_username. See the man pages for csh and renice for more information.

4. Jobs that run longer than 48 hours should be breakpointed. Every effort will be made to give a week's notice of downtimes. However, in emergency or security situations, little or no notice may be possible.

Those who exceed the limits will have their jobs killed.

Loan Items

1. Books are to be loaned out for 30 days. If you need a book longer it's probably worth buying.

2. Software is a three day loan item.

3. Please reserve the laptop and projector for the entire time you need them (no more than one week) and return it promptly. Notify us if you have any problems, or you think the machine needs a reinstall.

Privacy and University Policies

• We keep numerous logs of system activity. Certain logs describe basically publicly available information and are generally available, for example web logs. Other logs are not available, but are used to create reports based on aggregate data, for example, mail logs and network logs.

• While the support staff does not routinely monitor individual usage or access users' files or offices, in certain situations this may be necessary for system operations or to provide service. We will endeavor to do this in the most professional, discrete, and legal way possible. (See OSU's policy below.)

• See also OSU's Policy on Responsible Use of University Computing Resources. This document covers many facets of user and administrator rights and responsibilities.