Computer Science and
     Software Engineering

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Postgraduate Administrator Responsibilities

Our goal is to provide efficient access to computing facilities for students. For most students, the standard installation (perhaps with some extra software installed by our technical staff) will be sufficient. However, we acknowledge that some postgraduate students may require regular administrator access to maintain software and systems for their research.

If you are granted administrator rights on your machine then you are taking on a very significant responsibility, and this document explains what you need to be aware of. Some students who have experience administering home networks have incorrectly assumed that the same skills are sufficient to be an effective administrator in the university environment, and the consequences of this have included loss of not only their own data, but a significant impact on other students, and a lot of technical staff time to recover our systems from the ensuing problems (including severe virus infections!).

Requesting permission for postgraduate administrator rights.

Please print out this page and initial each of the following points only if you fully understand them and know how to perform them without any help. (If you do not know this much then you have work to do on your own, before being allowed to become an administrator on CSSE computers!) Then get your supervisor to sign it, so s/he also takes responsibility for your competence as an administrator, and take it to the Chair of the Facilities Committee, Assoc. Prof. Tim Bell for final (signed) approval. When this has been granted, you may take it to the Duty Programmer to obtain Administrator access on your computer.

  1.  Virus Checking: You must maintain your computer with an effective virus checking system operating continuously; "Sophos" is the current UC standard, but "AntiVir" is even better. The configuration files for the virus checker must be updated at least daily.
  2.  Data Backup: You must ensure that your data is adequately backed up, at least on a daily basis, for example by storing/copying important data to your H: or P: drives (or by writing hard copies to DVDs for long term archival). Often the only recovery from hardware and software failures is to reset the computer configuration, so you must always be prepared for all data on the computer to be lost!
  3.  Secure Operation: You must NOT routinely use the computer as the "administrator", since this opens up a number of security holes. Log in as "administrator" only for maintenance, and log out again immediately.
  4.  System Updates: Departmental computers, both Linux and Windows, are regularly updated with system patches, and you are expected to do the same. Please note that ICTS react very quickly to computers spreading viruses or otherwise threatening the Canterbury University network, by disconnecting the offending computer from the network and notifying the department. You should subscribe to a relevant updating service that informs you of the latest patches, etc., and know precisely how to use it unaided.
  5.  Software Installation: You must know precisely how to install any additional software that you may need and also how to configure it so that "administrator" access is not required to run it (whenever this is at all possible).
  6.  Fault Reporting: If you become aware of any problems that may affect the network (such as viruses and/or intrusion attempts) you should report them to the technical staff immediately by phoning the Duty Programmer (ext. 8251), or by requesting a new task.
  7.  Computer Policies: You agree to abide by all the computer use policies detailed by both ICTS and CSSE.

To the main page for CSSE Computer Policies.