Accounts and Groups

Questions

• Who qualifies for an account?
• How do I create an account?
• How long do I keep my account?
• Can alumni get accounts?
• How can I get and use a project group?

Answers

• Who qualifies for an account?

  • DCS Undergraduate
    If you are enrolled in a course offered by the Department of Computer Science at New Brunswick, you are eligible for an account on the DCS Undergraduate systems. Your account is only valid for as long as you are enrolled in a course, so you need to re-activate your account every semester.

    If you are a computer science major, you can apply to help@remus to be put in the csmajor group. Being in this group removes the need for you to renew your account every semester.

  • DCS Graduate
    If you are a matriculated student in the Graduate School at New Brunswick studying computer science, you are eligible for an account on the DCS Graduate systems.

    If you are not a matriculated graduate student in computer science, but you are taking a course offered by the Graduate School at New Brunswick Department of Computer Science, you are eligible for a one-semester account on the DCS Graduate systems.

• How do I create an account?

  • DCS Undergraduate - Point your browser at http://remus.rutgers.edu/newaccount.htmlIf you answer all the questions correctly, an account will be created for you, or your existing account will be extended. For new accounts the inital password is the first eight digits of your social security number, without the dashes. Note that it takes about 15 minutes for accounts created with the above web interface to become active. If you are renewing your account, your existing username, password, and files will not be altered

  • DCS Graduate
    If you are a matriculated DCS graduate student, an account will be created for you when you begin your matriculation. If you are just taking a course offered by the department, you should send mail to help@paul to get one created for you; please include your name and the class you're taking.

• How long do I keep my account?

  • DCS Undergraduate
    DCS Undergraduate accounts are only good while you are enrolled in a computer science course. If you are a computer science major but aren't taking any computer science courses in a given semester and are in the csmajor group your account will remain as long as you are an enrolled student. You can send mail to help@remus asking for to be put in the csmajor group if you are a csmajor. Accounts from each semester will not be closed until at least two weeks into the following semester so students can keep their accounts during breaks.

  • DCS Graduate
    DCS Graduate accounts for matriculated students are valid until you leave the program. Accounts for individual courses will be closed around two weeks after the beginning of the following semester.

• Can alumni get accounts?

  Currently, the answer to this is no. There has been some talk of providing alumni accounts for a nominal fee, but this has not happened yet, and I do not know of any firm plans to do this.

• How can I get and use a project group?

  • Getting a Group
    To get a project group, you need to send mail to help listing the usernames of all of the people that are going to be in the group. If all of the people don't have home directories on the same disk, some people will have to be moved. Organize among your group members who should be moved. You can see what disk you are on by entering the command cd;pwd. The output will look like /ug/users/username

  • Using Your Group
    The simplest way to use your group is as follows:

      mkdir project
      chgrp mygroup project
      chmod 770 project
      chmod g+s project
    

    This will make a directory called "project" that all members of the group can read and write to, but no one else can read or write. It also sets the setgid bit on the directory, so new files created in that directory will be owned by the same group as the directory ("mygroup"). Note that all directories above the one you create must have at least execute permission.

    Also, note that although the directory created by the steps above is readable and writable by all of the group members, files you create in it may not be. A file's default permissions are determined by your umask. Because of University academic regulations the default umask is 077, which means that when files are created, by default they can only be read by their owner. The simplest way to deal with this problem is to go back periodically, or every time you create a file, and use the command "chmod 660 filename" to make it group read/writable.