You can change your password either by logging into one of the Linux machines in the domain directly (at the terminal) or by sshing to login.cms.caltech.edu.

Example:

CMS has a password lifecycle of 180 days, adjusted to compensate for change-of-term and end-of-year. If you have a CMS account, you will be required to change your password twice a year.

You will be notified via the CMS department newsletter when a password changing event is coming up. You will also be prompted when/if you log into the CMS UNIX hosts that your password is near to expiring for several days prior to your account being locked out.

When you change your password, you will be required to follow UNIX-style minimum password requirements. If you also have a Windows account, we suggest that you make your password fit the Windows-style minimum password requirements as well, so that you can use the same password for both accounts.

If you forget your password, and you need your account reset, you can email helpATcms.caltech.edu to contact the system administrators. We will need to be able to confirm your identity somehow in order to reset your account. The easiest method of accomplishing this is to physically walk over to our office, in 112 Annenberg, with your Caltech ID.

When you request a CMS account through the CMS account request form, your account is created with a default expiration date of 4 years from your request date, or your estimated graduation date, whichever is earlier. This is for ease of administration - your CMS account may be culled if you are no longer affiliated with the Institute. If you are a visitor, your account is enabled only for the length of your stay at Caltech.

At the time of your expiration date, your account will become locked - that is, your account will still exist, but you will be unable to log in interactively.

Six months after your account expiration date, your data store will be archived, your homedirectory removed, and your local mail delivery halted. This archival process is not backed up, so any data that is remaining in your homedirectory is no longer guaranteed to exist past archival date.

As a service to former CMS students who have published their CMS mail accounts on academic papers, you may leave the CMS sysadmins with a forwarding address. We will continue to forward all email to your (username)@cms.caltech.edu account to that destination address, provided that the email delivery continues to be allowed. It is your sole responsibility to keep your forwarding address current. If your destination address consistently bounces/rejects mail, we will remove the mail forward.

Once we remove you from the mail alias list, we will not re-instate your mail forward.

We do not provide web redirection or other services to former holders of CMS accounts. Be aware that your CMS webspace is available only for the duration of your account.

If you do not graduate within 4 years, or if you stay at the institute as a graduate student, you may of course continue to use your CMS account. However, since there is no automated fashion in which we can acquire this information, it is again the responsibility of the CMS account holder to inform the CMS sysadmins (via helpATcms.caltech.edu) that you are staying at the institution, and that you need your account active.

It may come to pass after undergraduate graduation or completion of a doctoral program that you will be continuing to collaborate on projects with existing CMS students or faculty. If this is going to be the case, you may inform the CMS sysadmins that you are requesting collaborator status. This MUST be accompanied by approval from a faculty member. Collaborator accounts are enabled for a 1 year block of time. At the end of the year, unless informed again by the faculty member of an extension for another 1 year period, your account will be expired following the process above.

Finally, it is always the responsibility of the CMS account holder to read all email originating from the CMS sysadmins, so that you will be kept abreast of system outages, changes, etc.

It is _always_ better to log into your CMS account at a console - that is, sitting in front of a keyboard at the machine you're logging into.

This is of course not always feasible. If you are remotely logging into CMS machines, your sysadmins request that you follow these general rules:

This also means that you need to be keeping your personal computer(s) up to date and patched with the latest security updates.