User accounts

At the department, there are two main types of computer systems, UNIX based and Windows based. Each student and each employee has a user account for these systems.

Some general information on exactly your account is available at the user-information page.

User profiles under Windows (applies to student labs)

Every time you log onto a department Windows computer, every file which is saved in your profile directory is copied to the local computer from the server, and when you log out, this data is copied back to the server, this is known as a Roaming profile.

Some folders such as the Desktop and Documents folder are mapped to the home folder over the network (i.e your Desktop folder is mapped to H:\Desktop)

Roaming a lot of profile data can make your login/logout very slow, so it is a good idea to (when possible) instead save files and documents directly in your UNIX-home directory (H:\).

Accessing your UNIX home directory under Windows

Your home directory on the UNIX system is accessible from Windows when you are logged on. It is mounted from the home-directory server home automatically. To access it you can find it on H:\

Passwords

Passwords may contain almost any characters, but special characters such as the Swedish umlaut-characters åäöÅÄÖ should be avoided as they can be represented differently by different operating systems.

We do not enforce password rules requiring a certain amount of digits or special characters, our password policy just requires that your password is complex enough.

Tip: A passphrase is a simple way to construct a "password" with high complexity: https://xkcd.com/936/

Note: If an insecure password is detected at some point, the account will be closed for security reasons.

You can change your password at https://webapps.cs.umu.se/password/