Departmental Computer Coordinator

Each department and school has designated a computer coordinator to authorize accounts. Your first stop in setting up accounts should be your departmental computer coordinator.  The HelpDesk has a listing of the coordinators.  Questions about the General Access account and the establishment and maintenance of all other accounts are taken care of by the Help Desk, located in the lobby of the Computer Center.

UserIDs and Passwords

userID

Every faculty member at Binghamton University is assigned a userID.   Your userID is used for all host systems and is retained throughout your stay at Binghamton University.  The userID is also used as the first part of your e-mail address.

Passwords

Faculty members may have several different passwords to access a variety of systems. Most faculty will have a BINGSUNS and a POD password. POD passwords are used for accessing email, Blackboard, computers in public areas, classrooms, the campus libraries, wireless, Campus Manager, and for releasing print jobs from the Pharos laser printing system. More information about passwords, including instructions about how to change them, is available in the Computing Accounts and Passwords document.

Computer Accounts

BINGSUNS Account

Every faculty member is entitled to a general access account on BINGSUNS, the central Unix server.  This account can be requested by your department computer coordinator or at the HelpDesk.   You will use your userID and your BINGSUNS password to access your BINGSUNS account.  This account can be used for academic work requiring a Unix operating system, for personal web pages and for reading e-mail with pine.  The general access account remains active for six months after you leave the university.

POD passwords are synchronized with BINGSUNS passwords, thus changing your POD password also changes your BINGSUNS password; however, changing your BINGSUNS password does not change your POD password.

Electronic Mailbox Accounts

Electronic mailbox accounts are issued at the HelpDesk (in the Computer Center lobby).  Faculty members must show their university ID card when requesting an account.   You will use your assigned userID and your POD password to access electronic mail.   The mailbox can be accessed with a mail client of your choice (Mirapoint Web Mail, Thunderbird, pine and so on).  The electronic mailbox account remains active for six months after you leave the university.

BlackBoard account

Blackboard is a Course Management System that provides a powerful and easy-to-use suite of tools for instructors to build and manage virtual classrooms. Students enrolled in courses where the instructor is using the Blackboard course management system will automatically be assigned Blackboard accounts. You will use your assigned userID and your POD password to access Blackboard at http://blackboard.binghamton.edu. More information about Blackboard can be found in the Blackboard document.

Course Accounts

All students are issued BINGSUNS (Unix) accounts.  This account is sufficient for the classwork in many classes; it can be used for a personal web page and for running programs. Instructors of classes which require larger BINGSUNS accounts for their students should contact the HelpDesk (helpdesk@binghamton.edu or 777-6420) to arrange for the increase.

Instructors of classes which require access to the IBM mainframe (BINGVMB) will need to request those accounts for the class.  IBM mainframe accounts are issued by request only.  To be eligible for a course account the student's name must appear on the registrar's records as a properly registered member of the class using the mainframe.  Course accounts are activated on the first day of class and close on the last day of finals each semester.

Sponsored Research Accounts - Grants

Grant research accounts are assigned to project directors (grant holders) when use of computer facilities has been part of a funded grant proposal. Grant holders can request part of their budget be used for computing services by contacting the Research Foundation and submitting the proper paperwork. The Research Foundation then requests that a computer account be established for the grant. Sponsored research accounts are billed separately and usually have a unique userID.

Instructional Accounts

Faculty members may arrange for an instructional account through their department's computer coordinator. These accounts are normally associated with active courses for a specific semester. Once the request is approved, the faculty member can come to the ITS Help Desk to have the account set up.  Instructional accounts are often used to set up a web page for a class and to store class materials, rather than using the general access account for both classes and research.

Cruncher Accounts

Researchers who are interested in using statistical software may want to request a Cruncher account by contacting Jim Wolf, Director of Academic Computing. Cruncher accounts provide the user with large disk quotas and access to several statistical and data analysis software packages such as SAS, Matlab, IMSL, and Ansys. Further information about Cruncher can be found on our wiki.