Imager Technical Information

Title

modified: dd mmm yyyy

Account Expiration

modified: 04 Oct 2007

• There are 3 things associated with a person: the account, the home directory, and the imager filespace in /imager/people/. When a person's account expires, this procedure applies only to the person's imager filespace. Tech staff will have a semi-automatic way of deleting/archiving a user's imager filespace according to the user's type. When accounts are first created, they are assigned an expiration date. When the expiration date is reached, the supervisor receives a notification email requesting confirmation for account archival/deletion. After supervisor confirmation, any undergrad or masters account exists for a time period of 12 months before any archiving/deleting happens. The time period of 12 months is reasonable since any upcoming paper deadline would have come within 12 months of the account's expiration. Note that it is still expected that students make sure their important files are archived elsewhere before they leave.
• Undergraduate Interns: Accounts can be deleted after 12 months without archiving. Rationale: the accounts are usually too shortlived to accumulate lots of information that could be useful later. It is relatively easy to transfer whatever there is to a project directory as a checkout procedure on the day the student leaves.
• Visiting Researchers, Postdocs: These should not be automatically archived or deleted, since most collaborations continue for many years. However, when they are finally ready to be deleted, they should to be archived. Yearly reminders will be sent to supervisors. Rationale: this group knows to pull all important information to wherever they currently are. Also, there may be privacy issues with some of this data, more so than with the other user groups.
• PhD students: These should never be deleted, although pressure to reduce disk usage can be applied (preferably by the supervisor). Rationale: PhD students spend a significant portion of their life here, and their email is listed as contact on (hopefully many) papers. In many cases they continue to collaborate with their former supervisor or fellow students.
• M.Sc students: These accounts should be archived after 12 months. (i.e. disable the account but keep the contents). Rationale: M.Sc students stay for too short a period to reasonably expect that their account will remain forever, yet sometimes their accounts contain important project data. Ideally that would be in /imager/project or similar directories, but in practice that is not always the case, so keeping an archive makes sense.

Hardware Purchase Procedure

modified: 04 Oct 2007

• When purchasing new hardware, email Ming, Glen Lee, Dave Brent, and Ciaran Llachlan with the specifications.

Sudo Access Policy and Joint Admin Model

modified: 04 Oct 2007

• The Joint Admin Model exists for Imager machines so that representatives have admin privileges as well as the tech staff.
• Sudo access is given to the Imager representatives for Linux, Windows, and Macs. This is currently Tibi for Linux and Christopher for Windows and Macs.
• Sudo access should only be used in urgent situations after hours when help desk is not available. Help desk must be used whenever possible.
• When sudo access is used, email help desk notifying them of what was done on the machine.
• Tech staff will keep track of sudo accesses and will report un-emailed incidents.

Update Policy and Conference Freezes

modified: 18 Jul 2007

• Update policy applies to Imager computers on subnet 54.
• The imager tech members will decide upon conference freeze periods. The calendar on the Conference Freeze Dates page will list the freeze periods and the machines to be frozen during each period. For now, imager tech members are updating this page with the conferences and machines they know. The page will also list conferences for which machines do not need to be frozen, and these conferences will be indicated as "no freeze". Tech staff will check the calendar for freeze periods and will not update the listed machines until the freeze period is over. No updates (including security updates) will occur on listed machines during their freeze periods. * There will be a 48 hour notification on updates during non-frozen times. The updates will be tested on 'tom' first, and 'tom' will generate an email to imager-tech when it is upgraded.
• Look at the file /var/log/yum.log to see a list of recent updates to Linux machines.

Imager Filespace

modified: 28 Mar 2007

• The imager filespace is located at /ubc/cs/research/imager .

What changed with NetApps

modified: 26 Sep 2007

• NetApps documention link: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/local/computing/accounts/backups.shtml
• The above link contains information on how to use the backup/restore features on the new file servers.
• Recommendations for setting permissions: For most files = -rw------- (default, allows only you to read and write them.) C/C++ programs and other programs = -rwx------ (also default, allows only you to read, execute and write them.) See the man page on umask for information on how default permissions are set. For more information go to: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/local/computing/unix/permissions.shtml