Backing Up Files

You are responsible for backing up your own files.

It is a common problem for students to accidentally delete files or directories on Linux and Windows. Once a file is deleted off of the file server, it is gone FOREVER. We STRONGLY encourage you to keep a backup copy of your work on a floppy disk or zip disk.

Because of high traffic on the local network, the file server occasionally freezes for a few seconds. We are actively looking into a solution. There are reports of files being overwritten during these freezes. It is very uncommon, but once again we recommend having a backup in case this happens.

Also, email is stored in each user's home directory (in the .maildir directory). If you want your mail backed up, you will need to back up that file.

Remember to use the rm command carefully, especially with the -rf flags. Type man rm for more info.

Always remember Paul Lutus' "BACKUP RULE #1:

Count the number of copies of a file, and subtract one. If you have no backup, you have no file. If you have one backup, you have no backup. This rule brought to you by nature herself."

CGI scripts

CGI scripts can possibly crash the web server if you have an infinite loop or if you are logging warning statements (example of what not to start a perl script with: #!/usr/bin/perl -w). If you download someone else's CGI script, make sure you know exactly what it does. There have been many case when people have downloaded a thousand line CGI script and just run it. If you crash the web server because of this, your account will be locked.

Permissions

Make sure that you don't set your home directory to be world readable/writable. If you are using your account web space, make sure that your home directory is world executable (though not world readable/writable) and that your public_html directory is world readable and world executable (though not world writable).