Engineering Computing Home\Computer Accounts

Windows 2000 Account (Waterloo Nexus)

• Waterloo Nexus is a general purpose PC-based computing environment available for use by students, staff and faculty. It provides a wide variety of application software, print and file services and access to the internet.
• A Waterloo Nexus account is automatically created when you activate your Waterloo Polaris account. (see below)
• Staff and faculty should contact their departmental system administrator for an account.

• Waterloo Polaris is a general purpose PC-based computing environment available for use by students, staff and faculty. It provides a wide variety of application software, print and file services and access to the internet.
• All registered undergraduate and graduate students can get a Waterloo Polaris account by following the instructions below.
• To open a Waterloo Polaris account:
  • Go to any of the Waterloo Polaris labs and sit down at one of the workstations.
  • At the login screen click on "scratch".
  • Answer the questions as prompted.
  • The scratch facility will then tell you what your userid will be and the account should be available shortly.
• Staff and faculty should contact their departmental system administrator for an account.
• If you are a returning undergraduate student and you need to reactivate an existing account:
  • Follow the procedure "Open a Waterloo Polaris account" described above.

• The faculty provides a variety of laser printers which are available at any time. There is a nominal page charge for printing.
• A laser printing account is required for printing to most of the Engineering Printers.
• A WATCARD reader located outside the ECUSC (E2-1308) is used for transferring money from your WATCARD to your Laser Printing account.
• If you do not have an existing Laser Printing account, one will automatically be generated the first time you swipe your WATCARD.
• Laser Printing account balances are transferred from term to term.
• To query your Laser Printing account balance see Printer Accounts
• To close your Laser Printing account see Printer Accounts.
• Your remaining laser balance will be credited to your WATCARD on the following Friday. A 5% (minimum $0.25) charge will apply. See the Food Services pages for how to obtain refunds from your WATCARD.

• The engmail server provides email services for all undergraduate students. It is available for use by graduate students, staff and faculty on request through the ECUSC consulting office.
• A user's engmail account is automatically generated when their Waterloo Polaris account is opened.
• Mail can be read via email programs such as Eudora Light and Netscape Mail or by ssh'ing to engage.uwaterloo.ca and using a program such as Pine.
• There is also a web front end to email.
• Group Email accounts can be set up for class and project related mail.
• engmail supports anti-spamming features which are enabled automatically for all users. Individual engmail users may opt out of these controls if desired. Off-campus users whose mail is rejected by these features can still send mail to local users, with the help of a special anti-rejection key-of-the-day.

• The www.eng server provides general purpose web space for students, clubs and course web pages.
• Students already have space on their Polaris account for their web pages.
• Do not put files directly into N:\public_html\, rather access your web space as W: (see http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~polaris/usersguide/web.html (if you store files directly under N:\public_html, they will not necessarily have the correct file permissions, and may not be viewable on the web)
• You default homepage should be http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~userid.
• If your account does not have a public_html directory please go to the ECUSC consulting office.

• engulf accounts are available to all undergraduate Engineering students.
• The engulf accounts are for students to become familiar with the Unix environment.
• An account on engulf will be made available to you when your Waterloo Polaris account is created.
• An existing engulf account will be automatically reactivated when you reactivate your Waterloo Polaris account.

Report a Broken Link or any other Problem. Last Modified: November 03, 2010