Instructional Facilities

The Computer Systems Lab develops and maintains computing facilities in support of the Computer Sciences Department instructional mission. Resources are provided to students registered for Computer Sciences classes in accordance with the needs of the classes, as established by the faculty.

Appropriate Use Of Instructional Facilities

Instructional computing facilities are to be used only for Computer Sciences Department course work and personal research.

Course work must only be done on the computers designated for the course. This is necessary in order to provide adequate resources for all students.

Personal Research Using Computer Sciences Instructional Facilities

Experimentation and exploration is a legitimate part of the learning process. Students who have an account may use the instructional computing facilities for personal research to the extent that such use does not interfere with other users’ course work or violate the Computer Systems Lab Account Policies .

Computer Sciences instructional facilities may not be used for course work or research for any other department, may not be used in support of a funded research project, and may not be used for any commercial venture.

Students should understand that the Computer Systems Lab can not support personal research activity, so requests for additional resources (disk space, accounts, software, etc.) for personal research will be rejected.

Access to Instructional Linux Workstations

The person using the display of an instructional Unix workstation has priority over other users of that workstation (remote users).

If you think that other users are interfering with your use of the workstation (by using too many resources) you should take the following steps:

1. Check who else is using the workstation, with the who command.
2. Check which processes (and users) are using the most CPU resources, with the top command.
3. Send electronic mail to those users, politely asking them to log out or reduce their computing load.
4. If they refuse to comply or the problem is not fixed, please send electronic mail to lab@cs.wisc.edu with all the details of the situation. The Computer Systems Lab staff will investigate and attempt to remedy the situation.

At times of high demand, you may only use ONE instructional workstation at a time. Repeat violators will have their accounts suspended.

Background Jobs Forbidden

Students are not allowed to keep programs running on instructional Linux workstations after logging out as they may degrade system performance for anyone else using the workstation.

If the response time of a workstation seems unusually sluggish or slow to you, please follow the steps listed above in Access To Instructional Linux Workstations.

Computer lock use

Students may lock the console of instructional workstations for up to ten minutes. At times of high demand, displays locked for more than ten minutes may be unlocked and the user will be logged out. Repeat offenders may have their account locked.