Student Accounts and Data Safety


Contents

Accounts
Backups
Safety of Accounts, How to Change a Password
File Security
How to Use Printers
Forwarding of Student e-mail

Accounts

The user accounts are created and managed by the System Administrator (email: postmaster@server).

Student Accounts
Every student is assigned an account on the faculty student server fest.stud.feec.vutbr.cz and in the Novell NDS (Network Directory Services). The login name starts with x letter after which 5 letters of surname and two digit combination follow, e. g. xnovak24. Thus, the e-mail address is xnovak24@stud.feec.vutbr.cz and is valid for the whole stay of the student at the Faculty. Initial password is valid for fest.stud.feec.vutbr.cz server and for the Novell servers but it must be changed during the first login. The account at fest.stud.feec.vutbr.cz is also assigned for the whole stay at the University. Moreover, this is a server to which all e-mails of students come. The student rights and duties for utilising the student accounts are described in the Guidelines for the Usage of the Brno University of Technology Computer Network which are obligatory for all faculties and workplaces of the Brno University of Technology.
The Accounts of the Computer Science and Engineering Branch Students
The students of the Computer Science and Engineering branch can access Unix servers and workstations of the department. The login is kept unchanged, the password for the fest.stud.feec.vutbr.cz server is usable to access all other machines.
PhD Student Accounts
For PhD students the same rules as for employees are valid: they have their accounts in Novell Net with login names derived from their surnames, they can have Unix password at local servers if their department has not its own Unix server.

Backups

All users are fully responsible for their data. The reason for the backup of servers is the operating system backup. In case of system collapse the user data can become not up-to-date. Server failure is not an excuse for not delivering assinments or projects.


Account Safety, How to Change a Password

An account may be used only by the user with exclusive rights for the account. It is not allowed to grant the account (password) or computing facilities to other person. Moreover, users must avoid such situations when password can be revealed - either by using such password that can be easily derived or recording the password.

When creating a new password following rules should be followed:

The Unix password are changed by passwd command, in Windows 95/98 using Control Panel -> Passwords -> Change Other Passwords -> NDS tree. When changing the password, check whether the Czech keyboard is off - otherwise the password will consist of characters that cannot be entered again.

The students of Computer Science and Engineering branch may use the password on fest server to access also the Department servers and workstations. The Novell NetWare is valid also for all servers in the University NDS tree VUTBR.

If a student forgets his/her password, he/she must contact the administrator of the particular server, for fest server the Faculty Net Administrator.

A password will be changed after the identity of the person is verified (it is verified whether the user is entitled to use the account). To verify the identity, the student card or any other identification card with photo can be used.


File Security

It must be always assumed that your files can be read from anywhere on Internet. The Administrators take a big effort to avoid it, but in the field of safety it is always necessary to expect the worst possible situations. What can you do for your data safety? The list of activities starting with the most safe methods to the least safe ones is described below:

  1. Do never store confidential data in the computer!
  2. Process confidential data on the computer, copy the data onto the diskette and delete the data after you finish your work!
  3. Encode data with pgp command!
  4. Set to files such access rights, so they cannot be read by other users (in Unix the chmod og-rw file command can be used, in Novell NetWare rights command) and keep your password in secret.

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