[44096] in Hotline Meeting
athena logouts
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Corinne R Ilvedson)
Wed Jul 8 11:24:46 1998
To: hotline@MIT.EDU
Cc: corinne@MIT.EDU
Date: Wed, 08 Jul 1998 11:24:41 EDT
From: Corinne R Ilvedson <corinne@MIT.EDU>
Dear Athena,
While I was logged into a machine in the Building 37 Athena Cluster this
morning about 3 men working for athena came through (I'm assuming to do
maintenance). On their way through the cluster, they logged me out of my
machine because I did not happen to be sitting at the computer. I've noticed
this before - that they log anyone out who's computer is screensaved.
I feel this is an unnecessary and inconsiderate action. I could understand
if it were peak athena hours at the end of the term or the cluster was very
busy. But when I was logged out, there were 45 out of 59 machines free!
Over 3/4 of the cluster was empty!
It takes me several minutes to get my research work up and running on the
computer, so every time I log in, I have to recreate that. I have problems
with RSI, so I bring my own trackball to athena. If I'm logged out, someone
else may take the machine that has my trackball. Moving the trackball
requires that person to be logged out of my old machine. That machine and my
"new" machine have to be restarted since the keyboard/mouse/trackball
configuration will only work if the machine was booted with the same
configuration. I often run long simulations, if I'm logged out, I lose all
the simulation information. Therefore, it is not time efficient to log in
and out every time I go to the bathroom, make a phone call, get a drink, or go
to a meeting. Screensaving is a safe way to protect the computer while I'm
away and is perfectly acceptable as long as there are plenty of machines
available for others to use.
There are a lot of graduate students at MIT who spend long hours at the
computers trying complete their research so that they can graduate. Please
don't make it any more difficult for us. For these reasons, I would
appreciate it if you reconsidered your "log out policy".
I would appreciate a response. If this is not the correct office to address
this concern, please point me in the right direction.
Thank you,
Corinne Ilvedson
corinne@mit.edu
