The strategic way to access UTORmail is from a personal computer or workstation. After all, electronic mail should just be another tool alongside those normally used by the individual in their computing environment (e.g. alongside a word processor, spelling checker, spreadsheet, simulator, instructional software, etc.) Nevertheless we recognize that not all individuals can be presently serviced in this way. The UTORlogin service is being created to provide access to some of the functionality of UTORmail, without the need for a personal computer or workstation. The UTORlogin service is designed for individuals in one of the following situations:
* those without easy access to a supported personal computer or workstation environment[*] . As part of the UTORlogin service, the University Library will provide such individuals with acess to dumb terminals for use with UTORlogin. It is our expectation that the number of individuals in this category will decline over time as individual personal computer ownership and University supplied personal computer facilities increase.
* Those individuals who access UTORmail from personal computers or workstations, but also wish to use UTORmail while physically located at a University Library. It is our expectation that the number of individuals in this category will decline over time as the University Libraries replaces its aging dumb terminals with personal computers which include UTORmail software.
* Those individuals temporarily away from the University at conferences which provide access to the Internet. As conferences which provide Internet access have started to provide personal computers running software such as Eudora and Pine, this need for UTORlogin will also decline.
In keeping with the target customer base and service characterization, the UTORlogin service will offer just the UNIX Pine electronic mail software. Individuals using the service will be able to browse electronic mail in their inbox and compose responses. There will not be any way to print, save, download, upload, or automatically process messages.
UTORlogin will not provide access to the UNIX timesharing environment or to any tools in the UNIX environment. The University already offers a general timesharing UNIX service to its community, called GPU UNIX. Various departments also offer such services for their members, e.g. ECF, DCF, EPAS, and others.
The UTORlogin service will require a userid and password to access. The userid will be the eight digit, all numeric, Library bar code number. (We stress it is all numeric because some UNIX software has problems with all numeric userids, and this must be carefully considered.) Those without a Library card bar code number will be denied access. The initial password will be the student number or staff number, as appropriate. The Library has committed to assigning a special Library customer number to every individual who doesn't have a student or staff number but who are nonetheless entitled to a Library card. If technically feasible we will force individuals to change their password when they first successfully login. We will provide a way to change the password during a session.
We have not decided where individuals who have forgotten their password will go, but special staff empowered to change someone's password will be involved. These individuals will have specially privileged accounts on the UTORlogin service which will permit access to tools to change others' login password.
At locations such as the Library, a security problem develops if patron doesn't logout. We must still consider whether we will want an idle time-out. (Another consideration is some resources are consumed until a session is terminated.)
Once a successful login is completed, a single menu will be presented. The choices will be "UTORmail via Pine" and "password change". If "UTORmail via Pine" is selected, then Pine will prompt for individual's UTORmail electronic mail address (e.g. alex.nishri) and password.
In addition, since the recent decision to de-couple the UTORmail electronic mailbox name and the UTORlogin userid, there is no direct way to know which post office number the user is going to. We will therefore be prompting for the post office number when Pine is selected. We will try to provide the means to deduce the post office number given the userid, but whether we can deliver this depends on the state of the software in the August time frame; if it is not provided for September, we will try to offer it later.
The Silver Platter and Medline software packages are similar to UTORmail in spirit; like UTORmail the preferred way to access these is through appropriate personal computer or workstation software. For the same reasons as with UTORmail, it is desirable to offer an alternative means of access. The Library Information Technology Services Group will be installing Silver Platter and Medline software as an integral part of the UTORlogin service. When this is done, the above menu will include "Silver Platter" and "Medline".
With a client server electronic package such as Windows ECSMail, Macintosh Eudora, or PC Pine, the local personal computer sits idle waiting for the human user to type another character, and then handles that character locally; nothing is sent across the network and the post office is not involved until the final message is ready to be sent or a complete incoming message is going to be accepted for reading. On the other hand, with a timesharing service such as UTORlogin, as each user types characters on the keyboard they are sent across the network to the UTORlogin machine and then back to the user's screen. This generates many network packets and many interrupts at the UTORlogin machine to handle the typing. To handle the interrupts the UTORlogin machine been sized based on the experience at Queens University. We will use the Solaris operating system, rather than SunOS, because it implements some of the telnet packet handling in the kernel, resulting in fewer process interrupts.
We have purchased Quad ethernet cards for each UTORlogin machine in addition to the standard ethernet connection each already has. This will permit network traffic from each machine to be split across up to five ethernet networks in the future. We will not be using the Quad ethernet cards initially.
Technically, UTORlogin consists of three SPARCserver 20 model 712MP machines each with two 75 MHz processors, 256 MB of memory, and each with its own non-shared two 1 GB hard disks. When first connecting, the lookup of the telnet host name in a specially modified DNS will return the IP address of the least busy machine. Every login session will be assigned a fresh home directory with pre-set configuration files; on logout all created files will be removed. The only terminal type supported will be VT100.
Operations is currently evaluating tools for monitoring of servers. However, there is no assurance that such tools will be acquired before UTORlogin goes into production. Our only approach is to use the existing NocWatch system, even though neither the software or the hardware it runs on is supported. We will write new scripts to permit monitoring UTORlogin from Nocwatch. These may have to be re-done when new monitoring tools are obtained.
We will backup the operating system and applications software to magnetic tape nightly to permit recovery from disasters brought on by equipment failure or operator error; user files will not be backed up because none are permitted.
With high profile machines such as UTORlogin, we can expect attempts to break-in and disrupt service. A similar service set up at Queens University in the fall of 1994 had such repeated attacks. Experts at Sun have informed us that they recommend that machines running Solaris be connected to the Internet through firewalls running SunOS, but this is not practical in our environment. We will investigate and pursue ways in which to protect this service from malicious attack.