SIPB Guest Accounts

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There are two types of guests accounts. In a normal guest account, we sponser a user to have an account (usually placed in the sipb afs cell), and we make a request to athena accounts to create all the data necessary to support the account. The home directory will reside on a sipb machine.

Normal

These guest accounts are given to people who are doing work which we feel helps out in the goals of SIPB. These accounts are temporary, generally a term or a year, and each accounts's existance re-evaluated at the end that term or year.

The policy with these accounts was determined at the 11/25/91 meeting:

SIPB-sponsored Athena account policy

There are concerns which prevent the SIPB from sponsoring guest accounts for anyone who asks for them. These concerns include:

Furthermore, much of the functionality obtained through an Athena account is available on public-access systems that can legitimately give out accounts to anyone who asks and is willing to pay the (usually not very high) fees.

Therefore, the SIPB chooses to restrict account sponsorship to two classes of people:

SIPB members are entitled to sponsored accounts if for no other reason than because "membership has its privileges." Furthermore, SIPB members are elected only when the membership feels that they will be a worthwhile addition to the SIPB and help to FTGOS. Therefore, sponsoring accounts for members is considered a worthwhile investment.

Unfortunately, what is and is not "FTGOS" is currently somewhat undetermined. The mechanism for creating guest accounts currently leaves that decision to the discretion of the member sponsoring the account, although the SIPB Executive Committee (EC) may choose to override a member's decision to sponsor an account.

When a SIPB member wishes to sponsor an account for a non-member, he or she (the "or she" is assumed from this point forward) should contact the EC through E-mail to the sipb-ec mailing list or through some other channel, providing the following information:

  1. The full real name of the sponsoree, including middle initial.
  2. The social security number, MIT ID or some other 9-digit number which may be used by the sponsoree when he registers for his account.
  3. The desired username for the account.
  4. The address to which E-mail should be forwarded, if it should not be left on an Athena post office.
  5. The FTGOS purpose(s) for which the account will be used.
  6. If possible, a date after which the account will no longer be needed.

Note that if the account being sponsored is the reactivation of a deactivated Athena account, items 1 and 2 are not necessary, and the username provided in item 3 is the username of the deactivated account.

The sponsor should then wait at least three full business days after the message has been delivered to the EC. In that time, any SIPB member may choose to respond to the sponsorship request, asking for more details about the purpose of the account or questioning the sufficiency of the reasons given.

If someone questions the account, the sponsor can argue with him, or bring it up at a meeting, or whatever. Among other things, the EC has the authority to request that the sponsor or sponsoree come to a meeting and justify the need for the account. The final decision about whether or not to grant the account is left to the EC.

When/if the account has been approved, the sponsor should send E-mail to "accounts" with the information from items 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 above. If no expiration date was specified, then the date given should be registration day of the term following the term following the current term (e.g. an account sponsored in November should expire by default around the beginning of the following September). The message should be carbon-copied to the EC. Furthermore, if a home directory in the SIPB AFS cell is necessary, the message should be carbon-copied to the sipb-afsreq mailing list.

When an account is about to expire, the sponsoree must ask the sponsor to responsor it, once again stating how it will be used to FTGOS, or he must find a new sponsor for the account.

The Secretary of the SIPB will be responsible for keeping records of currently sponsored guest accounts, including their expiration dates, as well as for sending out notices when accounts are about to expire (if Athena doesn't start doing so).

Notes:

Temporary SIPB accounts

There are 10 SIPB temporary accounts named sipb[0 - 9]. sipb0 should never be given out. The others may be given out to whomever may need temporary access to the net or athena or whatever. The policy about these accounts is described here, taken from /afs/sipb/project/guests/admin/HOW\_TO\_USE

Marc Horowitz, marc@mit.edu