Workstation Use Guidelines

  • Machines located on the main department network, subnets 4, 16, 22, 23 and 25, are not to be rebuilt, have their operating system or setup modified or have a new operating system added without consulting Helpdesk (IST) first. In particular, graduate students are not to reconfigure the machines in their offices.
  • A workstation located on someone's desk should only be used with that person's permission.
  • Machines located in a grad office are shared by all members of that office.
  • You may use a machine for a CPU intensive program or for a long running program if you do the following. If you do not have permission to use a machine you may have your jobs killed.
    • It is listed in the Servers and Public Labs document for such use
    • It is in your office (don't inconvenience your office mates)
    • It is in your affiliated research lab. Please, don't inconvenience your lab partners.
    • It is designated by your instructor for a course and the program is for the course.
    • You have asked permission to use the machine. Permission can either be obtained from the owner of the machine or from TST who will ask the owner or let you know who the owner is so you can ask them.
    • you should not use a machine located in a grad office for long running or CPU intensive jobs unless you are a member of the office or have permission from all members of the office.
  • Please check /etc/motd on any machine to see if there are restrictions on use.
  • If the load average on a small workstation gets above 2.0 you should log out unless you have express permission to use the machine.
  • You should inform TST if you will be running a long process on any machine.
  • Use the nice command if you are running a CPU intensive job.
  • Do not run large background jobs that occupy a lot of swap or that don't backoff or shutdown when someone is on the console of a workstation.
  • Monitor your processes running on a machine to make sure they are behaving, especially those processes that you are using for the first time. See the man page for ps.
  • Undergraduate teaching machines should not be used for non-undergraduate work. Please talk to TST about using those machines.
    > Undergraduate laboratories