The default user quota is 1.5GB, which can be increased. Use quota -v to check your quota.

Disk space is a perpetual problem.
Nice users can run out of space because others use way too much disk space.
Therefore, we impose disk quotas on students.

Note that disk space is provided separately for PhD research, so that usage doesn't count against students' quotas.
Students can use up to 1.5G of disk space (home + courses).
Alumni homes must use less than 50 MB of disk space.
The lab directors may refine their policy on quota values (up or down) at any time.

Mailboxes
--------------
Students must use their UMB emails. No inbound emails coming from outside
the cs.umb.edu and umb.edu domains are accepted for students. Inbound emails
coming from the cs.umb.edu and umb.edu domains to CS/IT students are forwarded
to their UMB email address.

Reducing Disk Space Usage
---------------------------------------
It is a big win to compress text files with `gzip`.

See `man gzip`.

Consider copying files out to your PC or USB drive.

Over Quota
----------------
At login time, before the prompt is displayed, you may see a message from the
quota command about being over and having to reduce your usage by so much.

You can see that anytime by running the quota command.
If you are over your hard limit and cannot write to your home directory,
recall that each host has a `/tmp` directory where you can do scratch work.

This can help you examine archives or compressed files that you cannot uncompress in your home.

Thank you for your cooperation towards fairness and better service for all.

Nobackup Area
---------------------
The nobackup area is a terabyte partition available for temporary storage.
As its name says, it does not get backed up.

You can use the /nobackup/students/ space from users.cs.umb.edu as follows:

cd /nobackup/students
mkdir %username% where %username% is your login name.

Allow rwx access only to you on that directory.

chmod 700 %username%

You can check your disk usage with the `du` command.
See `man du`.

The main thing to know is that the `-s` flag gives a sum for a subtree without showing every subdir in it.

du -sh ~
K/M/G /home/$USER

du -h --max-depth=1 ~

To see the size of files in the current directory, use the following command:

ls -sh

This will not show the size of an entire directory; use the du command for that.

To remove any directories that are too big and are just taking up space, like the `.mozilla` and `.cache`, you can use the following command:

rm -rf

You can also remap your .cache directory to go into a nobackup space, which does not affect your disk quota.

Copy and paste the commands shown below into a terminal session to do that:

cd ~
rm -rf .cache
mkdir -p /nobackup/students/$USER/.cache
ln -s !$ .cache
chmod 700 /nobackup/students/$USER

**This will delete the entire directory and its content. Please verify that there is nothing important before executing.**

Email operator@cs.umb.edu for resource requests.

Computer Science and IT students have user accounts on users.

Use the username and password from the account you created on portal.cs.umb.edu.

Starting in March 2021, the Computer Science department imposed a new password policy.

Your password must have:
1) Between 10 and 128 Characters
2) At Least Two Uppercase Letters
3) At Least Two Lowercase Letters
4) At Least Two Numerical Digits
5) At Least Two Special Symbols (!$%#^@&*_+ etc.)

One way to choose an OK password is to pick a phrase or song and use the first letters of the words, with some non-letter characters.
Do not confuse "dictionary" with say the Webster's dictionary.

Cracking software comes with huge lists of words in many languages, real and imaginary, and English transliterations of languages in other alphabets: Russian, Mandarin, Swahili, Vietnamese, Arabic, Farsi, Hindi; all the words in the Koran; the CIA World Factbook's list of every place name in the world; car names, people names, botanical names, science fiction names, Klingon words; and just about anything you could think of.
If it has been written down anywhere in the world, it's probably in a cracking dictionary.

Any password derived from any dictionary word (or personal information), modified in any way, constitutes a potentially guessable password.

portal.cs.umb.edu has a password reset feature.

Use `sftp`, the secure version of the File Transfer Protocol that comes with Windows and Mac OSes. A PC client program, `psftp`, comes along with PuTTY.

If you prefer an application with a graphical user interface (GUI).

For Windows and Mac users:
---------------------------------------
[Filezilla] (https://sourceforge.net/projects/filezilla/).
[Cyberduck] (https://cyberduck.io/download/).

For Windows users:
---------------------------
[WinSCP] (https://sourceforge.net/projects/winscp/).
[Bitvise] (https://www.bitvise.com/ssh-client-download).

Yes, you can share files with other students on the server, just set the proper ownership and permissions. Use the following commands: chown, chgrp, and chmod.

You can backup your files on the server by copying them somewhere else.

We backup the server every night, email operator@cs.umb.edu for a restore.

We do tape backups daily, in the dark of night.
To request a file restore, send an email to `operator@cs.umb.edu` with the following information.

For current work, including course directories:
1. The name of the file.
2. What directory the file was in.
3. When you last edited the file, or saw it in good condition; yesterday, last month, etc.
4. A file created during the day and deleted shortly thereafter is gone. It cannot be restored.

An operator will restore the file(s) into the directory `RESTORE` under your home, usually by the next business day.
Please recover from there what you need, and delete what you don't.

A grace period of a week is usually granted before the RESTORE directory gets deleted under your home (unless you have already done so).

We recommend you do your backup (sftp, scp to your own storage devices).

We support homepages accessed through `https://www.cs.umb.edu/~username`, where username is your Linux/Windows login name.

Your homepage must be named `index.html` and be in a publicly readable directory named `public_html` under your home directory.

Everything on your webpage is visible to everyone on the Internet. Do not put any Personally Identifiable Information (PII) there. Your email address should be in the format of `Firstname.Lastname@umb.edu`.

Yes, you can access the server remotely over SSH:
Use Secure Shell (ssh) to connect to `users.cs.umb.edu`.

For Windows users:
--------------------------
We recommend the following free SSH client console/file transfer packages:
[PuTTY] (https://www.puttyssh.org).
[Bitvise] (https://www.bitvise.com/ssh-client-download).

For Mac users:
--------------------
We recommend the Terminal application that comes with the Mac.

There are no IP restrictions or VPN requirements, we do fun fail2ban, if youtype in your password wrong too many times within 10 minutes, your IP address gets blocked for 10 minutes, after that, the ban doubles.

Email operator@cs.umb.edu for help.

Email operator@cs.umb.edu for technical problem resolution.

Windows accounts and Linux accounts use the same kerberos system for authentication. Your Linux and Windows username and password are the same.

You only have one password. If you change your password on a Linux Desktop or a Linux server, users.cs.umb.edu, for example, your Windows password will change too. If you change your password from a Windows PC in any of the CS Labs, your Linux password will change, too.

You will also be able to change your password yourself from the CS Portal at the URL: "https://portal.cs.umb.edu".

User course accounts are created through the CS department Portal. The URL is "https://portal.cs.umb.edu".

The CS department Portal provides the following services to the user community:
o Create new/modify user's Portal account.
o Create a new Linux/Windows user account.
o Register for courses accounts - CS/IT students must do this for each new semester.
o Reset Linux/Windows user password.
o Reset user's Portal password.

Note - If a user changes their password from users.cs.umb.edu, their:
Linux/Windows password will be set to that new password.
Their Portal password will not change.

If a user changes their password from the Portal, their:
Linux/Windows and Portal password will be set to that new password.

Never share your password with **anyone**. We mean it.
We have a strict one-account, one-user policy.
We can help you communicate with other systems and share group files without sharing passwords.

If you share your password, you might lose your Linux/Windows account.

Send an email to "operator@cs.umb.edu" if you have any additional questions.

From users.cs.umb.edu, a.k.a pe15.cs.umb.edu, you can use the following 2 commands to find the UMB email address of your peers at the command prompt.

The first command is the preferred method, and it is:

$ u2c.sh where “” is the Linux login name. The output will be of 2 forms:

1. Firstname.LastnameXYZ@umb.edu, where XYZ are digits.
2. Firstname.Lastname@umb.edu.

The second command is:

$ unix2campus

Both commands show the same output.


You can use the mail client 'alpine' to send email on a CS Ubuntu host.

$ alpine Firstname.LastnameXYZ@umb.edu or
$ alpine Firstname.Lastname@umb.edu

Yes, you can use the WiFi network that is available in all 3 CS Labs. Please do not unplug the network cables from the PCs to plug in your laptops. Use the WiFi network!

There are a few empty power outlets in the room. Look for them! Do not unplug the power cables from the PCs or monitors to charge your laptops, mobile devices, etc. There are also some power outlets in the hallway outside the CS Labs that you can use to charge your devices.

Yes, there is WiFi access throughout the Campus.
To connect, you will need your UMB email and password.

For more information, go to: https://www.umb.edu/it/wifi

Log onto webmail.umb.edu using your credentials. Under settings (the wheel symbol), search for the keyword "forwarding". This will bring you to the forwarding screen to set the forwarding address.

At the top of the page, do:
1. Select Settings (wheel) -> View all Outlook settings.
2. Select Mail -> Forwarding.
3. Select Enable forwarding, enter the forwarding email address.
4. Select Save.

Notes: If you want a copy of the original message to remain in your mailbox, select Keep a copy of forwarded messages.

Users runs Ubuntu 24.04; most of our systems are Ubuntu. The CS lab Computers are Ubuntu 24.04 as well.

The server is physically on campus, in the ISC Building.

The server uptime is pretty reliable, although we had a memory error in January, which resulted in a reboot. Other than that, we usually reboot it once or twice a year, in between semesters.