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<h2>About the SRCF</h2>

<h3 id="what">What is the SRCF?</h3>

<p>The SRCF is the University of Cambridge's Student-Run Computing
Facility. We provide web hosting, shell accounts and various other
computing services to members of the University and groups such as
University societies. We are a University society, registered with
the Junior Proctor. As such we are not formally supported by the 
University Administration in any way; instead the service is maintained 
by a group of volunteers.</p>

<h3 id="who">Who are the SRCF?</h3>

<p>The SRCF executive &mdash; the <a href="committee">committee</a> and sysadmin (system administration) team &mdash; consists of current and former University of Cambridge students.
We hold elections for the committee positions every year at our AGM, according to our <a href="constitution">constitution</a>.
Any member of the University (staff or student) can <a href="signup">register</a> to become a lifetime member of the SRCF, and so use our services.
We do not charge any membership fees, or require anything from our members beyond that they abide by our <a href="tos">Terms of Service</a>.</p>

<h3 id="why">Why does the SRCF exist?</h3>

<p>The SRCF was formed in 1999 to provide services which the University Administration could not, including web hosting, standards-compliant email, shell servers, mailing lists, and other computing resources for student societies. The UIS simply does not provide or has decommissioned their similar services, such as DS-web, in favor of paid solutions. Nowadays, many external hosting providers also offer similar services, but at a cost and with nowhere near the full suite of ready-to-use of SRCF services</p>

<p>Our sysadmins volunteer due to their interest in the GNU/Linux operating system and related software, current server technologies, and to gain valuable experience administering large, multi-user, networked systems. 
The SRCF also effectively functions as the Linux Users Group (LUG) of the University.</p>

<h3 id="system">What sort of systems do you run?</h3>

<p>We maintain and manage all of our own hardware (physically located in Cambridge) and software.
We primarily use <a href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu Linux</a>
as it is free (<a href="http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html">in all
senses</a>), stable and relatively easy to maintain.</p>

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<h3 id="help">You guys are doing a great job.  How can I help you
out?</h3>

<p>We always welcome donations &mdash; as we don't charge for our services,
the future of the SRCF depends on the donations it receives. If you want to make a donation, please visit <a
href="donate">this page</a></p>

<p>If you want to donate some time and experience to help us out, then
why not join our support team? This is an email-based help list for
problems not requiring administrative access to the SRCF server. If you
have experience of using a website or other services on the SRCF, and
want to help out, then send an email to <a
href="mailto:sysadmins@srcf.net">sysadmins@srcf.net</a> to be
added to the list. Many thanks in advance to all who volunteer!</p>

<p>We are also always recruiting new sysadmins. If you have experience administering Linux systems,
or are willing to learn, please send an email to the committee at <a
href="mailto:sysadmins@srcf.net">sysadmins@srcf.net</a>.
We will invite you to meet the sysadmin team in person, and discuss where you can help out.</p>

<h3 id="users">Statistics</h3>

<p>There are currently <!--#echo var="users" --> users (members
with active shell accounts).</p>

<p>There are currently <!--#echo var="members" --> members of
the society (membership is for life).</p>

<p>We currently host <!--#echo var="societies" --> group
accounts, of which <!--#echo var="inactive_societies" --> are
no longer maintained.</p>

<p><img src="/membershipgraph" class="img-fluid" alt="Membership graph"/></p>

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