New User Information - Faculty/Lecturer
In general, the most important thing to remember is that you can always email support@cs.ucsb.edu with your technical support questions.
Account Information
The Computer Science Department shares a user account pool with the College of Engineering. However, the rest of the Department's infrastructure (email, file servers, web servers, routing, etc.) is completely separate. This means, that while might appear that a College account and a Department account are separate entities, they are really the same account. The differences in the accounts are therefore based solely on the separate physical infrastructures; CS users have their home directories on CS file servers, their mail is delivered by CS mail servers, etc.
To apply for an account fill out this online form. Be sure to indicate that you are affiliated with the CS department. If you already have an account with the College and you just need access to the Computer Science computers (i.e. your an Engineering student taking a CS class), then please see the the College of Engineering Computing staff located in Harold Frank Hall Room 3110.
Once your account is created you can log into the CS workstations either in person or remotely (through SSH). The department maintains two instructional labs; the Graduate Student Lab (GSL - for Graduate students only) and the Computer Science Instructional Lab (CSIL - for all CS students). Additionally, the department maintains a remote login machine named csil.cs.ucsb.edu exclusively for remote usage.
Note: computer use is governed by several policies listed here.
Your email address will be username@cs.ucsb.edu. Note, that since the College and CS share the account pool, you can also email username@engineering.ucsb.edu. If you create a web directory, then your web pages will be available at www.cs.ucsb.edu/~username/ For additional information on using your account please read the FAQ. The department performs nightly backups of all home directories as part of our disaster recovery plan. We can restore individual user's files and/or directories, but this is solely at the discretion of the technical support staff.
Class accounts
Classes are treated like regular computer accounts. For example the class cs10 has a computer account by the same name. This gives it an email address cs10@cs.ucsb.edu, file space, and web space (www.cs.ucsb.edu/~cs10/ ). However, unlike most accounts the class accounts do not have passwords assigned. Instead access is controlled through the use of SSH keys. For more information on this please see the FAQ. The department maintains a program for homework submission called turnin. For more information on turnin, type man turnin on any instructional lab machine.
Equipment Purchase
While be do not have the budget to purchase new machines for Faculty members, but we'll be happy to spend your money for you. We can spec out/build machines to your preference and, in most cases, install the OS and applications for you as well. Once a machine is built we can either manage it for you, or hand over administration. On machines that we continue to manage, we ensure proper patch levels, troubleshoot/fix problems, and allow NFS mounting of your home directory. Self-managed machines are the responsibility of the owner.
Backups
By default only your CS home directory is backed up. If you wish to have other machines or directories backed up please contact us.
