Boston University
Infomation for New Graduate Students

Get a BU ID card: http://www.bu.edu/terriercard/

Students can get the BU ID, known as a Terrier Card, Monday through Friday, 9:00am - 5:00pm from the Terrier Card Office, 775 Commonwealth Avenue, Student Lounge, Lower Level.  Note: The Terrier Card Office will not officially start issuing cards until August 30. If students would like to be issued a card before that date, they must see Jennifer Streubel in MCS 140F. She can produce a letter to carry over to the Terrier Card Office.

Get a BU computer account: http://www.bu.edu/computing/accounts/acsaccounts/creating/

Students can get a BU computer account at the Information Technology Office, 111 Cummington St, 1st floor. You must bring your BU ID, and your letter of acceptance into the CS program.

Get a CS account: http://www.cs.bu.edu/labs/

To get a CS account, stop by the lab at 730 Commonwealth Ave and speak with a Terminal Assistant.  CS accounts allow access to the in-lab Sun Ultra computers, and remote access to CSA and CSB, the department's main servers. CS-NT accounts allow students to access the WindowsNT workstations in the lab, teaching lab, and some offices.

CS research lab accounts: http://csr.bu.edu/accounts.html

CS research lab accounts are available to persons actively engaged in research in the CS Department. To gain access to the CS research lab, students must be sponsored by a faculty member.  The sponsoring faculty member will be responsible for allocating any needed equipment and for overseeing the student's use of lab resources.

Access to CS research lab:

The Computer Science Research Laboratory is on the 2nd floor of 111 Cummington Street. The main door of the lab is labeled MCS 205-218 and is across from the westmost staircase of 111 Cummington Street.  Cardkey access to the CS research lab is available to persons actively engaged in research in the CS Department. Your BU ID serves as your cardkey.

TFs and RAs automatically get cardkey access. Otherwise, you need to have a faculty sponsor and then ask Jennifer Streubel, in MCS 140F, to set up your BU ID card access to the research lab.

Web account: 

At the prompt on csa.bu.edu, type in: web-ok

This will create a public html directory in your home directory with the address http://cs-people.bu.edu/username

Accessing BU via Modem: http://www.bu.edu/computing/dialup/

Dialup access to your BU computer account is available (see above link for details).

Mail forwarding: 

Note that your BU cluster account <username>@bu.edu email is different from your CS cluster account <username>@cs.bu.edu.

It is suggested that you set up forwarding of email from your BU account to your CS account:

http://www.bu.edu/htbin/acsmail.pl/forward