Computing Policy

Policy Updates Coming Soon

 

Usage Policy

All users are expected to abide by the following rules. If you disagree with any of them, please discuss it with the system administrator before continuing to use your account. Violations are treated very seriously.

No Cracking

Under no circumstances are users to engage in "cracking"; that is, attempting to break into accounts on this system or remote systems or deliberately attempting to interfere with the normal operation of the system or network. Possible penalties include FEDERAL PROSECUTION and DISMISSAL FROM DUKE.

No Account Sharing

Under no circumstances are users to give out their account name and password to ANYONE, in the department or out. If they choose to do so, they are responsible for any infractions incurred "in their name". If anyone needs an account on the system, even for a short period, they should request a new one instead of "borrowing" an existing account. CHOOSE A GOOD PASSWORD

It is easy to break into any account protected by a "bad" password. Such break-ins compromise our whole system, so all must bear the responsibility of choosing good passwords. Some categories of bad ones are:

  • any word in any common dictionary
  • any word of 6 letters or less
  • anything consisting only of numbers
  • phone numbers, social security numbers, etc, even with punctuation
  • any name (backwards or forwards) related to the user, including names of friends, pets, cars, etc.

Good passwords are at least 7 or 8 characters long and contain a mixture of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, and numbers or punctuation.

Do not tell anyone else your password, or write it down anywhere accessible. System administrators can give you a new password (but not decode the old one) if you forget it.

Report Weirdness

Report any suspicious or weird account activity! For example if you find programs in your home directory that you are sure you did not create. It may be nothing, it may be a system bug, or it may be disaster about to strike. A few seconds of your time could save the department from a major disaster.

Share Resources

Exercise reasonable rules of courtesy within the department concerning the sharing of available resources, including printers, modems, CPU time, single-user software, etc. The basic rules for machine usage are:

  • All other machines belong to particular research groups and are not for general use without permission of their owners.
  • See the facilities page for more information about department's public hosts and other facilities.
  • Jobs on public UNIX computers running more than a few minutes should also be niced to 10 (see the documentation for the nice command). No user should run more than one such job at a time.
  • Do not "lock" any of the public workstations for more than a few minutes.
  • Do not print frivolously to any of the department public printers. We keep track of all printer use and we keep logs of that use. We do not currently enforce printing quotas. Please do not make us have to start enforcing them