noticeboard.ru.ac.za

This is a reminder that all existing student accounts on the University's ICT systems will expire at the end of Sunday 7th February 2010. After this date, any students who are not registered for the 2010 academic year will no longer be able to access their home directory, read e-mail, etc.

Students who are returning and re-register on or before Sunday 7th February 2010 will not be affected by this. (Note that this date is a week later than previous years, and now includes the vast majority of returning students). Students who are returning and re-register late will re-gain access to their account within about 12 hours of registering.

Students who're leaving the University and are not returning in 2010 are strongly encouraged to ensure that they've cleaned up both their e-mail inbox and their home directories on jackal before this date. Please be aware that once accounts expire we will not be able to help students who've forgotten e-mail or a document they still need, so make sure you have copies of everything you might need!

Leavers should consider setting a vacation message informing people of their new e-mail address and/or configuring an e-mail forward on their @campus e-mail address. Both these things can be done by logging into webmail (https://mail.ru.ac.za/) and selecting the "Filters" option from the menu. Vacation messages and forwards will continue to work after accounts expire, until the accounts are deleted (this normally happens around Graduation each year, but the timing is not guarenteed). Note, however, they cannot be configured or changed once accounts are expired.

Postgraduate students who intend to submit in time for the April 2010 graduation, but do not intend registering for 2010, may be able to have their 2009 registration (and hence access) temporarily extended. Doing so requires explicit permission, in writing, from the Registrar. The onus is on postgraduate students to organise such permission themselves on an individual basis.

Note that all registrations on the student network will expire at the end of Friday 29th January 2010, immediately before first year registration. Be aware, however, that support for the student network is only available during term times -- see http://www.ru.ac.za/studnet/support for more details.

Subscriptions to University-run mailing lists remain after accounts expire for as long as they still exist on our systems. This means that students who've left and who've forwarded their mail to another address will continue to receive mail sent to mailing lists until such time as they're manually unsubscribed by the list owner(s), or until their accounts are finally deleted. As a result, every year we get a few people complaining that they're receiving mail that's no longer relevant to them -- if this is true in your case, you should either remove the mail forward from your account, unsubscribe yourself from the relevant list(s), or filter the mail. Alternatively contact the owner(s) of the individual list(s) in question (not the IT Division) and ask them to help you unsubscribe.

2009 student accounts have now expired.


Postgraduate students who need an extension to their 2009 registration should visit the Registrar's office in the Eden Grove building. Depending on how busy the Registrar is and how complicated your individual case is, he'll do one of three things: extend your access himself on the spot, give you a letter to bring to the IT Division's help desk in Struben building, or contact us directly via e-mail. It can take up to twelve hours for your account to be re-enabled once an extension has been captured in the student records system.

Please do not ask the IT Division for an extension -- we cannot grant you one.

Please don't forward us your e-mail correspondence with the Registrar. In order to process an extension, we need original authorisation directly from the Registrar.

There are some caveats associated with these extensions. What the extensions do is that they re-enable your 2009 account. This means that anything that checks for an active registration in the current academic year (i.e. 2010) will not work. This is known to include the following:

• You cannot register on the student network (including the campus.ru.ac.za wireless network). This is because the self-registration system knows that finance will not process a debit to your student account for the fees.
• You can register a PC from a wireless network point in your department, but only if you were recorded as being a postgraduate student in 2009. This may affect people who completed four year undergraduate degrees in 2009.
• Whilst your 2009 student card will be re-enabled, no access groups will be assigned to it. This means that you'll have to get re-added to doors using student card-based access control.
• The above means that you will not be able to get into the Braae or Thesis lab. If you desperately need access to these facilities, ask the lab administrator for a manual exception.

There are probably others that we are not aware of.