Managing your pangea account

Last revision April 2, 2007

You can change your pangea password and set email features, including forwarding and spam deletion, by going to the pangea account maintenance web server.

The rest of this page gives background information on the maintenance web server and its features.

This account maintenance web server is based on the open-source software called Usermin (User Account Administration). It creates an encrypted SSL web session to keep your account password and information protected as they travel on the network. "Cookies" must be enabled on your web browser.

Please be aware that encrypted web sessions are only as secure as the computer you use. If your computer has been compromised by a hacker, he can capture your keystrokes - and thus password - before they are encrypted by the browser. We do not recommend connecting to this account maintenance server or any other sensitive web site from a public computer (such as an internet cafe) whose security is unknown.

When you point your web browser to this pangea account maintenance web server, you will be prompted to login with your pangea account name and your local pangea password, not your SUNet ID and password. The pangea account information web page describes the differences between your pangea account and SUNet ID.

Once logged in, you will be presented with a list of "Applications" that you can run from this server. Some of these are standard applications that come with the Usermin server software, and others have been written especially for use on pangea. Some applications have a Help button that will give you basic information for that application.

Don't forget to logout, using the button in the upper right corner of the web page, when you are done making settings! If your pangea account maintenance server session is left idle for a long time, the Usermin software will prompt you to login again when you try to make any changes. This is to protect you in case you forget to logout, and someone else sits down at your computer.

Here is what you can do on the pangea account maintenance web server:

1. Change Password
   Use this application to change your pangea local password. You must change your password when your account is first created, using the initial temporary password set by the system manager to get logged in. It is also a good idea to change your password periodically, say once per year, for security reasons.
2. Email Management
   This new application lets you set all email related configurations in one convenient web page. These configurations apply only to your @pangea.stanford.edu email account, not to your @stanford.edu email account. Of course, if you are forwarding your @stanford.edu email to pangea, then all these settings will apply once the forwarded email is received by pangea.

   If you use this email management application, you must not delete or directly edit your .forward or .procmailrc files in your pangea home directory, or you will corrupt your settings. Let this application manage those files.

   You can set three important email configurations with this application:

   • Spam Deletion
     You can tell the pangea server to delete or quarantine (move to a separate mail folder) all messages marked as "SPAM" by the pangea spam checker. This is much more efficient than filtering these spam messages in your own email program.
   • Email Forwarding
     Don't want to read email on pangea? Would you rather read it on your @stanford.edu account or an outside account (such as yahoo, hotmail, or gmail)? You can configure your pangea account to forward all email received at your @pangea.stanford.edu email address to some other address. If you configure forwarding and spam deletion together, then the spam gets deleted and only the good mail gets forwarded.
   • Vacation Autoreply
     When you are on vacation or otherwise unable to read your email regularly, you can setup an auto-response message that will be sent to your correspondents, so they know why you are taking so long to respond! Of course, your email is still kept on pangea or forwarded as you have configured. The vacation service doesn't change that; it just manages automatic responses.
3. Plan File
   You can set a message that appears when anyone uses the finger program to look up information about your account on pangea.
4. Running Processes
   Lets you see and control the processes (programs or commands that are running) on pangea that are owned by your account. This is equivalent to running the ps program from a command-line login and then using process control features available in the Unix shell.

   The application main window shows all your currently running processes. Click on any Process ID number displayed in this window and you get a Process Information window with detailed information plus control buttons. You can set a "Nice level" if you have started a big job that should run with lower priority, as per pangea policy. You can terminate a process that has become stuck.

5. SSH Configuration
   This application lets expert users modify their ssh program configurations. Specifically, you can manage the list of known remote hosts and copy your own public/private ssh keys around to different computers.
6. System Documentation
   This is a web browser interface to the traditional UNIX on-line manuals. Those manuals are normally accessed by running the man program from a command-line login. For example, if you type "ssh" into the search window, you will see a list of manual pages that relate to the ssh program. Clicking on a manual page title shows you that page. This could help you figure out how to use the SSH Configuration application!

Pangea is a timesharing Unix server. All accounts have full Unix shell functionality. All features of the maintenance web server can also be accessed by running typed commands from a ssh command-line login.

Take me to the pangea account maintenance web server.

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