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People still use our old-fashioned Unix login servers

(utcc.utoronto.ca)
90 points sugarpimpdorsey | 2 comments | 30 Jul 25 23:10 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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charcircuit ◴[03 Aug 25 09:25 UTC] No.44775300[source]▶
Open up other machines to the internet and recommend people upload their code to github instead of the school's file server. People who want to read email can use their web browser to load gmail or outlook depending on what the school goes with. For the cron jobs I would want to know what is being scheduled before providing a recommendation on how you can get rid of the login server for it.
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Telemakhos ◴[03 Aug 25 10:42 UTC] No.44775593[source]▶
It’s a University: students are there to learn. Mulituser UNIX machines are great place to learn; I probably wouldn’t be where I am now if I hadn’t cut my teeth on AIX, with ircii and pine for mail and X windows and a public_html directory making exploration fun and easy. Sure, you can give a student Outlook365 access and Wordpress, but will he learn anything from them?
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1. 6031769 ◴[03 Aug 25 12:41 UTC] No.44776160[source]▶
He will certainly learn what an RCE is.
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2. secabeen ◴[03 Aug 25 15:34 UTC] No.44777277[source]▶
And when he does, the blast radius is a single unix box/VM or even a single account. You don't put institutionally-critical stuff on things like this. If it gets hacked, you shut it down, have everyone who logged in during the window change their password, and restore from backups or rebuild from scratch.