SCCS Account Usage Guidelines

Welcome to the Swarthmore College Computer Society. We, the system administrators, like to maintain liberal policies for users, but we do have a few rules:

  • Use the system in good faith. Experiment all you want, but don't try to override existing security. The SCCS is maintained by students, not a professional staff; please be considerate in your use of it.

  • Respect other users and their data. For example, you should not browse through other users' directories unless they have given you specific permission to do so. In other words, /home/username directories are private. To ensure the privacy of your own files, be sure to set the permission flags accordingly. Type "man chmod" for further information.

  • Don't share your account, and never tell someone else your password. Accounts are for the exclusive use of the account holder. Permitting more than one user on each account is an unacceptable security risk for the whole system. You should be careful to safeguard your password for two reasons: first, if unauthorized users gain access to the system through your account, you will be held responsible. Second, anyone who uses your account will introduce themselves as you to potentially thousands of people across the world, via the Internet.

  • Please do not make excessive or inappropriate demands on our resources. The SCCS is likely to be fairly busy, so if you have UNIX access elsewhere on campus, we encourage you to make use of it instead for CPU-intensive tasks, if possible. We ask that you keep the size of your home directories as small as possible, since disk resources are tight also. In general: SCCS accounts are not a right. We reserve the right to terminate the account of anyone for any reason (however we would not make such a decision lightly).

  • Please remember: the sysadmins have very little time to volunteer. By all means provide feedback and make suggestions but please don't expect too much. We intend to run a "production quality" system for vital services such as email and news. We will give highest priority towards keeping these services running. However, we are not in a position to make any guarantees.

  • Sysadmins will act in an honest and responsible manner. Due to our limited resources, we will not guarantee data privacy, integrity, or anything else.

    If you have any problems or questions, feel free to contact the system administrators by email at "staff@sccs.swarthmore.edu".

    Your use of the SCCS implies understanding of and consent to the above terms.

    Thanks! The Condor Sysadmins: