mckeon@unm-cvax.UUCP (06/21/84)
Some notes from the "High Turnover" BOF, Salt Lake USENIX, June 1984
The people who were there who have uucp addresses have been mailed a
list of each other's names & addresses. Non-uucp BOF attendees will
get a paper copy of the list and of subsidiary material. That list
could be posted here also, pending approval by those who don't mind
their names & so forth being posted.
[ Editorial comments are in square brackets like this. ]
Discussion and additions are invited -
===============================
[ It was clear that many people struggle with the problems of having
dozens or hundreds of new customers arrive at once - often computer
neophytes taking academic courses on a UNIX* system. ]
* UNIX is a trademark of AT&T Bell Laboratories.
[ Several sites have developed documents for these beginning users - at
Steve Mahler's suggestion we agreed to do a star trade of what
we have available - each site sending whatever they have developed to
all the others. This will allow sites to then request desired material
directly from others. ]
[ Quite a few methods of 'dealing with the rush' are in use - here are my
notes - methods are rarely attributed to sites or individuals - people
who want to take credit or discuss please speak up. ]
=============================== often used methods
Short courses - an hour or two of orientation to terminal use.
Short handouts - orientation; covering the 'bare essentials' - range
in size from one page to six.
Several different account creation/deletion methods are in use - some
sites do paperwork on another machine/OS, then batch account creation,
at least one creates generic account names that are changed to the new
user's last name (or a combination of initials, etc.).
Some sites arrange for a 'user guru' in each academic department, and
use that person as the first point of contact for people with
questions.
Often students work as assistants/consultants for novice computer
users.
Often the functions of teaching and computer service provision are
separate
Tailored .login (.profile) files are often provided (most sites seem to
use 'csh')
Also .login or .cshrc files are used that perform 'start-of-account-usage'
activities - subscribing to a class-oriented newsgroup, etc.
The different issue of teaching graduate students how to use UNIX
seemed to be either much easier, or lost in the shuffle - no sites had
different arrangements for people with computer experience who wanted
to learn UNIX. ( other than word of mouth & 'read the manual' )
=============================== less often used methods
Purdue has added example sections to many manual pages using '.so' for
forward porting. The location of the .so varies with the nature and
complexity of the command.
One site uses 'career accounts' - you get an account when you enter
school, keep it till you leave.
Some sites place sample programs or letters in newly created accounts,
and a README file that is an index to the other files.
One site teaches 'ex' before 'vi', introducing 'vi' as a superset of ex
One site had done a key phrase search & permuted index of volume 2 - a
project still in progress.
Another had set up a tree of command families, using ` man -k "" `, the
.SH NAME field as the data base, separating commands into logically
related groups.
Another had done something like:
% ln /bin/cp /bin/mnemonic/copy
for all commonly used non-mnemonic commands.
Recommendations or reviews of introductory books on UNIX are welcome -
post to news
=============================== resource allocation
There was much discussion regarding how much access the client
population has to terminals, machines, cpu cycles, source code, etc.
A wide range of opinions exist, and some people felt quite strongly
about the issue.
[ to editorialize slightly, I feel that 'resource allocation' is a
nicer term than 'fascism' - a word which was mentioned a time or two. ]
[ Given that the contention ratios of clients to resources - people to
terminals, compiles to cycles, files to megabytes - vary so much among
sites, it seems unfair to judge another site's choices of allocation
policy and implementation of that policy. ]
Some samples of resource allocation methods:
[ used to "make the computer run on time" :-) ]
One site limits neophyte users to a single machine, which provides
fewer commands, and has other differences from systems used by the rest
of the campus.
One forces a password change at first logon.
One site improves password choices by encrypting 'finger' output and
comparing it to the encrypted password.
One site had login-time arrangements limiting students to one hour of
connect time per day.
Another prevents student homework copying with mods to file access
checking - students have GIDs in a particular range, accounts in that
range can't read files owned by other accounts in that GID range.
One site takes a different tack -- files may be copied if the name of
the copier is in ~owner/.friend, and a variation of 'cp' is used.
Various arrangements exist for students handing in 'electronic
homework' - typically a command that places the homework file in the
professor's homework sub-directory.
One site has groups of terminals in department areas - and policing is
done to assure that a terminal in each location is available for accounts
from that department, logging off interlopers with alien accounts after
a 2 minute warning.
Another site schedules labs in terminal areas, and runs a group
reservation program under cron to oust people not in the lab from the
terminals.
============================ source access
Access to UNIX system source code is approached in various ways - one
site has each student sign a non-disclosure agreement, and apparently
leaves source open.
Others 'rm -rf /usr/src/*' except on one machine, basically to ease
maintenance.
[ access to source was a fairly hot issue at the BOF - clearly there
are differences between machines that have user accessable answer
modems, tape drives, or network links, and those that don't -- ]
[ also the point was made that variations in licensing agreements over
time might make a difference -- at the root this seems to be an issue
for the attorneys - your site's & Bell's or Berkeley's. I don't know
enough law to offer an educated opinion either way ... ]
There was discussion of collecting real money from students for
computer services - as a lab fee or something similar.
[ I understand that UCSD does something like this - career student
accounts which get a small contribution from department(s) upon
enrollment in class(es), representing enough money to do the class
work. If the student runs out of computer account money the computer
administrators will accept cash from the student before reenabling the
account. the above is third-hand - corrections from UCSD about this are
welcome - denis. ]
--
Denis McKeon, UNM Computing Center, Albuquerque, NM 87131, 505-277-8148
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