EWS Policies

The workstation labs currently include more than 300 workstations and serve over 10,000 users. The mission of EWS is to provide a high performance and highly reliable instructional computing environment for the students and faculty of the College of Engineering.

To provide the best possible service and to efficiently manage the workstation labs, the following policies have been adopted:

If you do not see the ews type and you are in the College of Engineering, please go to the CCSO Resource Center (1420 DCL) and have them add it. New EWS accounts are generated nightly, and you will be able to log in the next day.

If you are not in the College of Engineering and are taking a class you must talk to your TA or professor to get your account created.

If you are not an engineering student, not taking engineering classes, and feel you need an EWS account (Faculty and Staff included), please email manager@ews.uiuc.edu with your situation.

1. No food, drinks, or tobacco products are allowed in the labs.
   
   
2. A workstation account is issued to an individual. No one (including brothers, mothers, sisters, spouses, or friends) is allowed to use that account except the person it was issued to.
   Do NOT give your password to anyone under any circumstance.
   
   
3. All students are required to vacate the workstation labs at the designated closing time.
   
   
4. No gaming. No games of any sort are allowed to be played on the Engineering Workstations. This includes: IRC, MUD, Quake and other amusing network games.
   
   
5. Research Computing: The EWS Labs are not intended for research computing since it may interfere with instructional computing activities. Please contact your department to find out what computing facilities are available to you.
   
   If your department has no computing facilities to offer, the EWS workstations may be used ONLY for non-profit, academic research from 11pm - 8am and no more than five (5) workstations may be used concurrently during this time.
   
   NOTE: Installing/running any software not authorized by EWS or directly related to College of Engineering coursework is considered Research Computing. For example, an EWS user may not use his/her EWS account to run a P2P ("peer to peer") server or offer any other service to others, whether they be within or outside UIUC. Please send email to manager@ews.uiuc.edu before installing/running any software not already provided by EWS to ensure it is not in conflict with the Research Computing policy.
   
   
6. University Policies: All computing activities must comply with University Policies outlined at:
   
   http://www.admin.uiuc.edu/cam/CAM/viii/viii-1.1.html
   
   

• Core Applications EWS workstations include a set of general-purpose core applications. These applications are funded, licensed, and supported by the College of Engineering and EWS Staff. The number and types of core applications will likely change over time, base on usage and demand. To maintain a stable and predictable computing environment, core applications will remain at the same revision level for the duration of the fall and spring semester (except for problem fixes and security updates). The types of applications currently in the core application set include:
  • Web browser
  • FTP client
  • PDF and Postscript viewer
  • Telnet client
  
  Unix-only applications:
  • Mail reader
  • News reader
  
  NT-only applications:
  • UI Direct client
  • Gradebook
  • Virus detection software
  
  
• Course Specific Engineering Applications Depending on the uniqueness of the software and scope of its use, the requesting department may need to pay for some or all of the initial licensing and annual maintenance costs. If a department purchases the software and licenses for installation on the EWS workstations, a copy of the purchase agreement and proof of ownership must be submitted to EWS staff. EWS will maintain ownership of the licenses and any software locking devices while the software is installed on the EWS workstations. Once the software is removed from EWS servers and desktop workstations, EWS staff will return all software and licenses (including software locking devices) to the department.

  A database of software and instructor contact information maintained by EWS staff will be used to attempt to contact instructors/departments to confirm the continued use of the software, however it is the responsibility of the instructor/department to confirm with EWS that their software will be needed again next semester. If the EWS staff is not notified by two weeks before the start of each semester, it will be assumed the software is no longer needed and can be deleted from the servers and workstations. Any class software may be removed from the EWS machines during the summer unless the software is needed for summer session or has been requested for the fall.

• Requesting Software Installs To ensure proper installation and testing of applications, instructors are encouraged to request software installs well in advance of when it is actually needed. More specifically, all software requests should be complete at least two weeks before the start of each semester. At that time, EWS staff will finalize server and desktop configurations and provide an opportunity for instructors or teaching assistants to conduct final testing of their applications. EWS will attempt to accommodate requests made after this deadline, however installs may be severely delayed. It may not be possible to install the requested application once the semester has started. All software requests can be submitted via the Software Request Web page. A netid and ph password is required.

• External Software Locking Devices External software locking devices (sentinels) are very difficult to accommodate in a public lab. Often found on Microsoft NT machines, these devices are physically attached to a parallel or keyboard port. Multiple sentinals often cause incompatibilities and the devices are difficult if not impossible to secure to the desktop computers. EWS no longer supports applications that use sentinals unless a single locking device can support all the necessary licenses and the locking device can be installed on a secure server in the EWS machine room.

  As an alternative, EWS has installed a commercial software metering application named "Keyserver". Most software vendors generally accept Keyserver as a secure method of metering software licenses. EWS staff will negotiate with software vendors (on behalf of a department or instructor) to adopt this non-obtrusive method of metering application software.