Accessing the Compsoc Network
There are a variety of methods by which you can access your account and mail on the Compsoc network. These include SSH for logging in, POP3 for mail retrieval and SFTP for file transfer.
Please note that no plaintext services are now offered by Compsoc. please see the section on SSH for more details on how to access Compsoc securely in for a variety of purposes. Additionally, SSL IMAP4 and POP3 services are now supported.
You should ssh to the machine on which you have been given an account — either stanley or salami.
It is good practice to verify the host key fingerprints when you connect from a new machine. To help in doing this, they have been provided here, PGP signed by the support team GPG key.
SSH
Many common methods by which you may wish to access your account on the Compsoc network (or elsewhere) — including telnet, POP3, FTP and more — exchange data in plain (that is, non-encrypted) text. It's relatively easy for nefarious persons to grab your plain text password (or other potentially confidential information) from the network as it flashes by.
SSH encrypts all the data it sends over the network, including your password. For this reason, we recommend you use SSH for logging in to the Compsoc network and SCP — a file transfer program which is part of the SSH family — for file transfers. It's also possible to use SSH to encrypt mail transfers using a technique called "port forwarding" — see the SSH documentation for details.
SSH clients are available for most operating systems. Linux and BSD distributions usually provide one — often OpenSSH, which originated in the OpenBSD project. To connect to the Compsoc network from a Linux machine, run:
$ ssh username@machinename.ox.compsoc.net
replacing machinename by the desired choice.
A variety of SSH clients are available for Microsoft Windows. PuTTY is an excellent basic client. It does not implement some of the more complex features of other SSH clients, but it's more than adequate for simple terminal connections. And it's free.
Mail still requires some setup. Details will appear here when they are sorted.