Technical Note - Getting Started

Summary

This information is intended to help new students, visitors and staff begin using the standard ECS systems. It should answer some common questions and give you starting points for finding out more. If the technical question you have is not covered here, you should be able to get more information from the other technical notes.

Details

Our systems

The ECS systems are disparate and varied, but we work hard to ensure interoperability across all machines. Both desktop machines and servers can differ a great deal, and include various kinds of Macintosh, a few scattered Windows boxes and various flavours of Unix. These machines all share files and user information throughout the school. Unix users should find that their customised set-up should appear regardless of the desktop machine they log into.

Getting started

Registering a new account

All student and staff accounts should be setup automatically. If you are a visitor, your account may already be ready. When you arrive you should see the School Office who will advise you on what you need to do to get an account created. All new accounts (or returning student accounts) are setup so that you initially log into a machine with the username register and the password register. Alternatively, you can register via the web. This will take you through the process to activate your account.

Usernames and passwords

Graduates and staff members are allowed to choose their own usernames. Your username can be set during the registration process, and this username should be recognised on all ECS machines. Your password will be the same on all ECS systems.

If you are a graduate student, staff member, or visitor, you should be able to log in to any desktop machine in any office or lab. Under graduate students will only be able to log in to desktop machines in general labs. All the Unix and Macintoshes will require that you type in your username and password before you can use them.

Email

ECS Staff and student email addresses follow the format:

FirstName.LastName@ecs.vuw.ac.nz

For example, Lindsay Kingston's email address would be:

Lindsay.Kingston@ecs.vuw.ac.nz

Victoria University also issues staff members with an email address FirstName.LastName@vuw.ac.nz. Students will also have an email address provided by Student Computing Services.

To read your email on KDE, we suggest using kmail (under the Internet Menu in the K Menu), while on the Macintoshes we recommend Apple Mail or Thunderbird.

Web browsing policy

The cost of browsing off-campus sites comes out of the school's funds. This unfortunately means we have to disable international web browsing for first year students (aside from documentation useful to first year study). Other ECS members may browse international sites, but this is provided to research purposes only.

Student Computing Services gives a way for students to conduct non-research browsing.

Getting help

If you are having difficulties, please read the bug report guidelines for information on how to contact the ECS Programming Team.