The Department of Biology Accounts

The Department of Biology provides accounts to users of the computer systems in the department. Account requests can be made to biocompute@duke.edu. Users are required to sign the User Policy for Biology Servers. Although these accounts are different from those assigned by Duke University's Office of Information Technology (OIT), the Biology account userid will be the same as the user's OIT NetID.

Each account is provided to one user only, i.e. the owner of the account should not share the password. The owner is fully responsible for any actions taken using their account and the content of all the files belonging to their account. Each user must take all reasonable precautions, including proper password maintenance and file protection measures, to prevent use of accounts by unauthorized persons. Please follow Arts and Sciences Computing Guidelines for Choosing a Password .

Accounts may be revoked or restricted at any time if evidence is found of irresponsible behavior such as "cracking" (trying to break into accounts on this or remote systems) or lending accounts to others.

Home directories are established when accounts are created and are the property of the corresponding user. As a general rule, home directories are considered private. [1] Group related information or work done for hire should therefore never be stored in a user's home directory.

Group directories will be used for storing files related to that group. Files and directories stored in a research or administrative group project space are the property of the group head. In most cases this is the faculty member or supervisor in charge of that group. This means that if a user is to leave the group, the files contained within the project space are the property of the group head and are not protected within the privacy rules granted a user's home directory.

[1] Privacy of the home directory is equal to the privacy of a persons desk in a University office. No one may enter there without your permission except under extraordinary circumstances and with a search warrant or the explicit permission of the department chair or the relevant Dean.