policy(8) MAINTENANCE COMMANDS policy(8) NAME policy - site policies for backup, accounts, disk space, etc The policies in this document are not hard and fast rules that have been created, but policies that have evolved over time. The policies are subject to change as people's needs change. BACKUPS Backups are performed on all supported UNIX workstations. Each quarter a full snapshot is saved of the current environment. We will keep these snapshots until the media becomes unreliable. The current estimate is 3 or 4 years. Note: this practice was started at the beginning of Fall Quarter, 1990. We run weekly incremental backups on the weekend (normally Saturday) which save everything which has changed since the last full save, and daily incremental backups Monday-Friday which save everything changed since the last weekly save. (The daily saves are normally done around 4am). ACCOUNTS Accounts on the Unix machines are available for any Physics Dept. student, staff member or faculty member who fills out an account form and is covered by the Entitlements document. Forms are available in 2180 Smith Lab. DISK SPACE The current standard is that undergrads and guest are per- mitted 5MB, graduate students and postdocs are entitled to up to 15MB of disk space, faculty members and full time staff up to 20MB. When we find disk space low (less that 100MB free), a mes- sage will be put in the message of the day (/etc/motd) announcing that disk space is tight and requesting the big- gest disk users to free up some space. If disk space isn't freed up in a timely fashion, the staff will take action to free up disk space. When disk space is tight, the first thing that will be done is to run cleanup. Cleanup removes dvi and object files when the source file is older than the correspondingly pro- duced file. If you want to retain a particular object/dvi you can rename the file. If someone continues to abuse disk limits, the staff will eventually warn said user that they are hindering other people's work, and that they must get under the limit. This notification will be via electronic mail. For those who don't respond by adjusting their usage, then the next time Sun Release 4.1 Last change: LOCAL 1 policy(8) MAINTENANCE COMMANDS policy(8) disk space is short, their largest or oldest files will be compressed until adequate disk space is made. They will be notified via electronic mail which files were compressed. People who have constant a need for large disk space are encouraged to work the with staff to purchase additional disk space. People who have temporary storage requirements should check with the staff about using the scratch areas rather than their home directory. In the course of managing disk space utilization on the pub- lic filesystems (those not purchased by a particular user or group), we may find it necessary to move a user's home directory from one filesystem to another. We will give as much advance warning as is practical. But the fact that your directory is /net/pacific/0/foo instead of /net/atlantic/2/foo is not guaranteed to be permanent. PROCESSES No single user will run more than one resource-intensive process on any given machine, and nor more than two such processes in the cluster of UNIX workstations. Obvious resource-intensive programs include Mathematica, Maple, Macsyma, and programs that require more than 6MB of memory, 10 cpu minutes. Jobs should be run with a nice value of 19. If the staff discover a user exceeding these limits, we will send electronic mail informing the user that they are engag- ing in behavior that is not appreciated. If we discover the abuse because another user complains that they are not get- ting their work done, we will kill the more recent job(s) until we get the system load down to where the complaining user can get work done. If you have a job that will take excessive resources, you should talk with the system staff to find out if they could help you use resources more effectively, and to see if there are times, machines, etc. that would permit you to get your work done in a timely fashion while not adversely affecting the productivity of our other users. COPYRIGHTED SOFTWARE Do not copy copyrighted software. Do not move it to other machines. If you need a proprietary package on a machine where it is unavailable, contact the staff about acquiring a legal copy. PRINTER USAGE Do not monopolize public printers with lengthy print jobs during the day (8:00 AM to 6:00 PM). If you have print jobs that are either very large files or very compute-intensive PostScript, and will take longer than about 10 minutes to Sun Release 4.1 Last change: LOCAL 2 policy(8) MAINTENANCE COMMANDS policy(8) print, please hold them until off hours. This particularly applies to the printers called north (smith4035), south (smith4144) and sys-laser (smith2097). Print jobs that hold up the print queues for a long time are subject to being killed to allow other users' jobs to print. PASSWORDS Unix passwords must be at least 6 characters in length, and only the first 8 characters are used. We have had problems with crackers in the past, so we now periodically run typi- cal password-cracking programs in an effort to pre-empt the success of a cracker. To protect the account owner and the site as a whole, accounts whose passwords are guessed by the cracking program are locked until the owner can change the password to something safer. If your account is locked, please contact the computer staff (see the end of this docu- ment). Good password practices: change your password every 3-6 months. Make it something you can remember without writing it down ( _N_E_V_E_R write down your password), 8 characters is much better than 6 characters because it's a lot harder to guess all 8-character strings. Use mixed case (capitalize a character or two at random, not just the first letter), misspell a word, put a digit or one of the punctuation char- acters (!$%^&*+=-_|/?) in the middle, or put short words together. Your password should not be: your username, any form of your proper name (first, last, initials, etc), names of fam- ily members or pets, variations of birthdates, social secu- rity numbers, or license plate numbers, any non-mixed-case proper name or word which may be found in a dictionary (NOTE: foreign words are just as bad -- the cracker may well not be a native speaker of English). Note that it is a bad idea to use the characters '@' or '#' in a password; these characters are kill-line and erase- character in Unix System V, and it is impossible to override this until after you are already logged in, so your password gets deleted as you type it if you use those characters. We are not currently using System V, but it is likely that we will at some time in the future, and you may also encounter it elsewhere. By choosing a good password, you not only protect your files, but all the users on the system -- a good Unix cracker can become root on almost any Unix system if s/he can just log in in the first place. As root, they have unlimited access to all files and programs, and can wreak unlimited harm to everyone. Please help us keep them out. Sun Release 4.1 Last change: LOCAL 3 policy(8) MAINTENANCE COMMANDS policy(8) PRIVACY Protect your own privacy by protecting your files appropri- ately. We urge every user to become familiar with directory and file protection under Unix; see the man pages for chmod(1v) and chgrp(1). We will be glad to answer questions about file security. Users are expected to respect the privacy of other users. The University considers attempts to view computer files without permission of the file owner to be academic miscon- duct. QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, ETC Send mail to the mailbox ``action''. The computer staff may be found in 2180 Smith Lab, or reached by phone at (614)292-4269. Sun Release 4.1 Last change: LOCAL 4