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NOTE: Spring 2022 - the organization.rice.edu server is also being replaced.  Please move any personal data or web sites to OIT supported storage and web platforms. See: Service Update: Storage Decommission

The "Rice Unix Facility", or RUF, was decommissioned years ago, and one of the surviving servers, kennel.ruf.rice.edu, completely failed in 2014.  It was an old, unsupported, server; both hardware and Operating System.  A new server, organization.rice.edu; was created to provide access to the old kennel.ruf.rice.edu accounts and content for a temporary period to give users additional time to transition their websites to modern technologies.

With the implementation of current hardware and operating system and adherence to Rice security guidelines, RUF users will notice a few differences from the old, kennel.ruf.rice.edu system.

Key differences on the new server, organization.rice.edu:

• SSH access to organization.rice.edu  from Rice networks only
• Default Shell on organization.rice.edu is bash
• no FTP access.  SFTP access only.
• No samba/CIFS access supported.
• No X11 supported.
• Pine is replaced with ALPINE.

• User access to authorized org. accounts still available.

SSH ACCESS

SSH access to organization.rice.edu (or kennel.ruf.rice.edu ) is allowed only from Rice networks.  Users may connect from the campus network, or when off-campus; via their VPN account or through the SSH gateway boxes. For more detailed info:

Connect to various Unix or Linux Rice servers using ssh while your computer is roaming

Default Login Shell = bash

Users on  old RUF systems, got either csh or tcsh shells.  Since organization.rice.edu is a new server and the default shell is bash.  All users have a default .bashrc  and .bash_profile setup on their account. (This is similar to other Rice systems like clear.rice.edu). 

Secure FTP (SFTP) access only to organization.rice.edu

The old, insecure access FTP that was on kennel.ruf is not allowed under current Rice security guidelines.  Those users who ftp files and web pages to their organization.rice.edu  personal or organizational accounts will need to use some SFTP access client (not FTPS; i.e; FTP over SSL/TLS ).   Organization.rice.edu only supports 256-bit encryption algorithms.  Check your favorite SFTP client; its default setting may be for a 128-bit algorithm.   FTP access (to port 21) will be denied, SFTP access (to port 22) will be accepted. 

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Connect to various Unix or Linux Rice servers using ssh while your computer is roaming

No SAMBA or CIFS support

The old, RUF servers used SAMBA for accessing windows systems or the old printing subsystem.  The need for the SAMBA protocol was discontinued long ago on the old RUF server. These access protocols are not available on organization.rice.edu

No X11 support

The old, RUF servers used the X11 window system, which is not available on organization.rice.edu

Pine is replaced by ALPINE

The old email client called "pine" is not available any longer.  We have installed ALPINE instead on organization.rice.edu.  You can invoke it with the command "pine"  (or "alpine") and it will use your old .pinerc file for configuration if you have one.

User access to their authorized organization account is still available.

If a user was also authorized to access some organizational  account (dept., group, functional) on the old RUF system they still have that access.

To access your organizational account, after login with your personal NetID account; users can issue, for example;  the command "cd ~myorganization" to change to that directory (or "cd /rufhome/myorganization" ).

Moving your old RUF web pages to a new, supported, OIT web platform

If you have a web presence on the old kennel.ruf.rice.edu (now at organization.rice.edu), we insist that you move that to our OIT Enterprise Web Services. 

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