Account Information

Requesting an ME Computer Account

All students are given an ECN/ME computer for accessing the ME departmental computers once they are registered as ME students. This process is automatic and specifically keyed to your registrations as an ME student.

If you do not have an account, you will need to talk to the ME Business Office or your advisor to initiate an account request.

Changing Your Password

Your passwords for all ECN and ITAP computers are maintained by a single centralized database. This way, when you change your password on any ECN or ITAP machine, it will automatically change everywhere.

You can change your password online through ITaP's Account Portal.

You can also change your password by connecting to your UNIX home server and running the passwd command.

Disk Quota Info

All ME account have a disk quota set to ensure availability of disk space for all users. As of the Fall of 2013, all ME students have a 20GB disk quota on the server tools.ecn.purdue.edu.

Many research groups in ME have compute and storage servers as well. These machines tend not to be backed up, but they also do not usually have quota limitations. If you group has such a machine, you may find hundreds of gigabytes or more of space available.

The department offers shared group spaces as well. These spaces are hosted on the server project.ecn.purdue.edu and do not have a disk quota. These groups are available for the duration of the current semester for any ME academic course need. There is a form to request this space available in ME 2042 and this form will require your professor's signature.

Checking Your Disk Quota

This quota can only be accurately checked from the UNIX shell. The information you see when looking at your R:\ drive from a windows system is close to your quota but not absolutely accurate. The conversion from a UNIX file system to a windows file system can create errors in estimated free space available.

To check your quota, connect to tools.ecn.purdue.edu and run quota -sv.

Expand Your Disk Quota

If you just need temporary space, you can use the C:\Temp or D:\Temp directories on the PCs, the /tmp directory on tools or widget, or your ITAP career account space. If you need more space in your account, there is a procedure to follow:

1. Make sure you are only storing current course-related or research material in your account.
   • We simply can't hand out more disk space to users who have their account full of pictures of their cat or the hottest new MP3 files. We also cannot provide space to keep your entire academic history at Purdue. (we'll check!)
2. Move any archived materials to CD's, DVD's, or flash drives.
   • You do not need to store your entire literature search on your account for access. (we'll check this too!) This can reduce your disk usage by a considerable amount.
3. Use flash drives or portable hard drives to transfer large datasets between lab machines
   • If you are doing serial computations on multiple windows machines, you do not need to store all of the data sets on your computer account. Large flash drives and portable hard drives are a far more efficient use of space.
4. Use ITaP Research Computing's Fortress tape storage service
   • ITaP provides a tape-based fileserver for storing immense data sets with network access. Access can be requested from the RCAC group at ITaP.
5. Pick up a "Resource Change Request" form in the E-Shop (ME 2042) to request a quota increase
   • We will want to talk to you to find out what you need the space for. If it's for a legitimate reason, we have no problem with giving you more space.