Introduction Grid Computing Lab Course AUP

To reach the machine dedicated to the IGC2005 Lab Course, you will first have to login to the head node. A username and password will be assigned to you by the tutors (in case you lost it, contact Dennis Kaarsemakers). On the course machines themselves, you will have root access. With that you can do all kind of wonderful things that you have never dreamt of on the normal UvA systems. However, that does not mean that you have to exercise all that power, or indeed that you supposed to do that. Whenever your prompt starts with a pound sign, beware of the extra havoc and dismay you can cause to yourself, your fellow students, or the system itself.

In particular:

• respect the privacy of others
• don't run keyboard sniffers -- and beware that you never type a valuable password when logged in to the course systems. Use secure copy (scp) with public key authentication, and always initiate copies form the outside to the inside.
• don't snoop network traffic that's not your own
• don't abuse the systems for sending spam, identity hijacking, or general obfuscation of identity
• don't destroy someone else's work (remember that it's easy to do damage when running as root!)
• in general, behave nicely -- this course type is experimental

Note also that the systems are not backed up! Machines have many parts, and moving parts are sensitive to wear. Disks, fans, &c will die on you! This means that you should store your configuration and work on the central faculty systems. And why not use a version management system like CVS or subversion for that? Using a persistent way of managing configuration and data is part of your project, so document what you do.