EWS
       
INFORMATION USER ACCOUNT TOOLS INSTRUCTOR TOOLS
EWS POLICIES
Mission
Statement

The EWS 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.

Account Policy All students enrolled in an eligible degree program are issued EWS accounts. Eligible degree programs are as follows:
  • All College of Engineering degree programs
  • Chemical Engineering
  • Agricultural Engineering
  • Math CS / Statistics
  • Physics

If a student is not eligible for an EWS account but is taking an engineering course, he or she will be issued temporary account access by his or her instructor or TA. Temporary accounts expire at the end of each semester and can only be renewed if the student is enrolled in an eligible course for the following semester. Temporary accounts do not include a print quota (see: printing policy). In order to determine if you have an EWS account, please visit the EWS password page. This page will also direct you to the campus AD password changing page at http://ad.uiuc.edu.

If you are currently enrolled in an eligible degree program and do not have an EWS account, please visit the CITES Help Desk in 1211 Digital Computer Lab (DCL).

If you are not an eligible student, not taking an eligible course, but believe you are entitled to an EWS
account (Faculty and Staff included), email manager@ews.uiuc.edu with details regarding your situation.
Lab Policy

  1. No food, drinks without lids, or use of tobacco products are allowed in the labs.
  2. No disruptive behavior (physical or electronic) will be tolerated in the labs.
  3. Your EWS account is not to be shared with anyone. DO NOT give your password to anyone under ANY circumstance.
  4. All students are required to vacate the EWS labs at the designated lab closing times.
  5. No games of any sort are allowed to be played on the workstations.
  6. If you receive a phone call while in the lab, please be courteous to others and take your phone call out to the hallway.
  7. If listening to audio with headphones please adjust volume control when necessary. No one should be able to hear your music.
  8. The EWS lab telephones are for use by EWS staff only.
  9. Users are prohibited from working at multiple EWS machines simultaneously.
  10. Machines can be locked for as long as 15 minutes. Any machine locked longer will be logged off by staff. Machines with scanners should not be locked.
  11. The workstations should not be rebooted by users under any circumstance.
  12. Please keep your work area clean. Put any trash in lab garbage cans and excess paper in recycling cans.
  13. All computing activities must comply with University Policies outlined at:
    http://www.admin.uiuc.edu/cam/CAM/viii/viii-1.1.html

NOTE:EWS users may not use their EWS account to offer services to others, whether they be within or outside UIUC. 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. 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 EWS policy.

Violation of any EWS policies could result in account termination.
Printing An EWS account provides a free print quota of 300 pages per semester for any student who is enrolled in an eligible degree program. This free print quota is provided to meet basic user printing needs, and is reset to 300 pages the day before the beginning of each semester. Temporary EWS accounts are not issued a free print quota. All users are able to purchase pages through an EWS print billing plan. (see: print billing plan) The following lists free print quota per semester:
  • Fall - 300 pages
  • Spring + Summer Session I - 300 pages
  • Summer Session II - 300 pages
EWS strives to provide reliable and error-free printing services. However, we recognize that some printing problems are unavoidable. Because the vast majority of print problem reports we receive are due to user error, our general policy is not to grant refunds. The following printing mishaps are examples of instances where refunds would not be granted:
  • Multiple copies were printed
  • Garbled output from using command line lpr or mpage on a .pdf file
  • Encoding related errors
However, some EWS printing problems are the result of circumstances outside the user's control. When this can be shown to be the case, we do grant refunds. These types of problems may include:
  • Toner outages
  • Power outages
  • Print system malfunctions (with evidence)
If you wish to seek a refund, please retain any pages that printed improperly and email manager@ews.uiuc.edu. Your email should include detailed information about when the problem occurred, what application was being used, what file was being printed, and which printer you were trying to print to.

For more details about printing and "best practices," please see our printing guide.
Research Computing The EWS Labs are not intended for research computing. The EWS workstations are intended only to support instruction. Installing or running any software not authorized by EWS or directly related to College of Engineering coursework is considered Research Computing. Please contact your department or advisor to find out what computing facilities are available to you.
Lab Consultants

Lab consultants are available to help users "as best they possibly can." If you have a problem, from logging out to completing a complex file transfer, ask the lab consultant for assistance. Lab Consultants can only assist you when they know that a problem exists, so if you are having trouble, ask for help.

Consultants can provide help with general Linux questions and system-specific questions. Though they might not be familiar with all application programs, consultants will try to provide as much assistance as possible. If consultants are unable to help you with a problem, they can direct you to other information resources, such as teaching assistants, the CITES Help Desk, and manuals.

CPU Usage During prime time computing hours (8am - 2am), CPU priority will be given to console users (users sitting at the workstation). Remote (background) jobs will automatically be killed if they utilize more than 40% of the CPU and accumulate more than 30 minutes of CPU time. In addition, no process may run longer than 24 hours, regardless of their CPU consumption. Users will be notified via email after a job gets removed due to this policy.

 

EWS Manager: manager_AT_ews.uiuc.edu
 ©2008 Engineering Workstations,
College of Engineering,
Departmental Services (DS),
Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES),
University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign