Pangea computer accounts

Last revision October 22, 2007

Your pangea account identifies you to the school of Earth Science's computer server, pangea. When you login to your account, pangea recognizes that you are an official member of the Earth Sciences community, and will allow you access to its services, such as web page hosting and file storage.

Am I eligible for an account on pangea?

All students, faculty, staff, and official visitors in Earth Sciences with a SUNet ID can get a free pangea account. Guests are eligible if sponsored by a faculty member. Stanford students from other departments outside Earth Sciences can have a temporary class account if needed to access software or data on pangea used in an Earth Sciences course. The instructor or teaching assistant for the course must provide a list of the students' names, SUNet IDs, and email addresses to the pangea system manager. These class accounts will be deleted during the break after the quarter ends.

How do I change my password?

You can change your password from the pangea account maintenance web server.

What happens to my account when I leave the School?

Access is normally terminated six months after you leave Stanford. If you have provided an outside email account, you will be given warning. Access may be terminated immediately for mis-use of resources.

At termination, you can no longer login to pangea and all your files are deleted, including files in your personal web directory and any permanent anonymous ftp directory that was created for you.

If you are continuing to work on a project with an Earth Sciences faculty member after you leave Stanford, that faculty member may sponsor you for continued full access to pangea as a guest account.

What is the difference between my pangea account and my SUNet ID?

Your pangea account allows access to services provided specifically on the pangea server, by the School of Earth Sciences. The SUNet ID is for identification for access to the services of the rest of Stanford University. This distinction is sometimes confusing, as you can use your SUNet ID to access some services on pangea. However, neither your pangea account nor your SUNet ID can access all services, which is why you need to set up both accounts upon your arrival at Stanford.

The most important issue in the use of your SUNet ID is security. You use your SUNet ID to access many important university services, such as registering for classes and checking your transcript on Axess, as well as logging into computers. Therefore, you do not want to use your SUNet ID password in a situation where it might be captured by a hacker who is monitoring a network segment. All Stanford services that use your SUNet ID employ strong encryption, but some types of logins to other computer systems, such as pangea, may not. Therefore, your password on these other systems should never be the same as your SUNet ID password.

Stanford services that use your SUNet ID password, including certain logins and services on pangea, all accept encryption via kerberos. Stanford provides free kerberos software for Macintosh, Windows PCs, and Unix or Linux systems. Once you login to this software (called Stanford Desktop Tools or klogin), then you can connect to Stanford computers and most protected web pages without any further login.

All Stanford protected web pages also accept Webauth logins that prompt you for your SUNet ID and password via a secure (encrypted) web server, in case you don't have the Kerberos software. Some very secure protected web sites, in particular Axess, required the Webauth login every time you connect.

Stanford servers, such as pangea or the general Stanford UNIX computing resources, also accept logins to run programs or copy files using the ssh encryption protocol.

Although most services on pangea also use one of the encrypted login methods described above, some network services provided by pangea use weaker encryption protocols, such as Windows PC or Mac OS X network file shares. Use of these weaker protocols does create some risk that your password can be captured by a hacker. This is why your pangea password and your sunet id password must be different, although your pangea account name and SUNet ID account name are the same.

If a hacker got your pangea password, and if it were the same as your SUNet ID password, the hacker could gain access to your important university records and the university central servers. Please use different strong passwords for your pangea account and your SUNet ID account, and whenever possible use encrypted logins to all computers and services.

In many cases, the pangea services that use encrypted logins will accept either your local pangea password or your SUNet ID password for access.

Can I share my pangea account?

No. Accounts are for individual use only! Sharing your account with anyone else is a big security risk for the whole system, and an explicit violation of the Stanford University Computer and Network Usage Policy.

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