Computer Usage Rules

Please Read This Carefully

Students should be aware that the University publishes a document describing formal "Conditions of Use" for University owned computer equipment. Copies of the document may be obtained from the ITS (Information Technology Services) desk.

The "Conditions of Use" constitute a legal document and are thus often difficult to interpret. Below is a list of things that are considered breaches of the "Conditions of Use" by the School of Information Technology & Computer Science. Breaches of the rules below may result in denial of access to the departmental computers. The minimum penalty is loss of account for 2 weeks. The maximum penalty is determined by applicable legislation. By signing your enrolment forms you have agreed to abide by all University regulations including those on computer usage. Note that most of the restrictions below apply to all users, not just students. Also note some of the restrictions are a legal requirement, not just University regulation.

• No food or drink to be brought into the labs.
• Users are not permitted to use someone else's account, even if the owner gave permission.
• Don't access others user files without their permission.
• Don't access others user accounts, ever.
• Don't access any account not specifically authorized to you.
• Don't engage in activities that are designed to invade the security of another account.
• Users must not divulge their password to any person.
• No one needs to to know your password, ever.
• System administrators do not need to know your password.
• Don't let any other person use your account.
• Log off completely when leaving a terminal.
• Students have full access to electronic mail and the Usenet news system:
• Never send unsolicited email to another person. This includes advertisements, chain mail and surveys.
• Never send abusive or obscene e-mail. Remember that electronic mail is not secure and can be read by people other than your intended recipient.
• Articles posted to usenet must comply with usenet guidelines. This generally means posting to appropriate newsgroups. Do not post articles which are abusive, in bad taste or likely to annoy other usenet users.
• Students should not attempt to by-pass any restriction placed on them by the system administrators or restrictions on Intenet access:
• Do not use mail-to-ftp gateways.
• Do not use port redirectors/port bouncers.
• Do not use SLIP or PPP emulators (including slirp or tia).
• Do not use University resources to participate in unauthorised activities off campus.
• Users are not permitted to run "daemons" of any description unless explicity required in a course. Daemons are programs that not directly controlled by you while on your terminal.
• Users must refrain from running commands which consume unreasonable amounts of system resources.
• Only run the find command inside your home directory
• Consuming resources by running programs not related to your course work is also prohibited.
• Users should not alter any file permissions so as to by-pass system security. In particular, they are not permitted to modify the permissions of their home directory.
• Users may not copy files they do not own. Exceptions are
• The public area /share/pub
• The public IT&CS area /share/cs-pub
• Files set up for public access on the World Wide Web.
• Users must not alter their environment in such a way as to cause increased system load.
• Users must not attempt to monitor system performance or who is using it.
• When using X terminals, avoid running unnecessary X clients to reduce load on the machine you are signed on to. X clients should be directly related to the work you are doing.
• Users are not permitted (obviously) to attempt to crash the system. If you know of any bugs/problems that may cause the system to crash or become unusable, report them to the support staff.

If you have any doubts about what you are doing, don't do it. Contact the support staff for clarification.