Temporary (sipbn) 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.

• Decide that the person really does need a SIPB guest account. This is Athena; if he only wants to log in once to read mail, consider logging him in as sipb0 in the office (but don't give him the password). There aren't any real hard-and-fast rules about use of SIPB guest accounts, so just use your best judgement.

• Choose an unused account from the list in the accounts file. sipb0 is normally reserved for testing, etc.

• Check out the accounts file with RCS. Using RCS insures we have a log of who has been using the guest accounts and why.

• Write down the user's real name, local contact (phone), permanent email address if s/he has one, how long s/he will be using the account, why the account is being given out, the current date and your username. The easiest way to do this is to copy the information for sipb0 and replace it with the correct info. (Temporary accounts should be restricted to two weeks.) Then ask for a password, and change the password of the account to this password. Record all this information (including the temporary password) in the accounts file. It's a good idea to make sure nobody has accidentally left the admin directory world-readable or writeable.

• check in the accounts file with RCS.

• When the user is done, change the password back to the canonical password, and email to sipb-afsreq to clean up the account.

• The script clean_dir.csh needs to be run to clean the directory out. It needs to be run with system:administrators tokens in the sipb cell. The argument is the account name. The person who cleans the account should then remove the information from the accounts file, signifying this account is no longer being used, and can be given out again.