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Accounts and PINs

Usernames, PIN rules, signing in, lockouts and using shared machines.

Usernames and PINs

  • Username: 3 to 20 characters, lowercase letters, numbers and underscore.
  • PIN: exactly 4 characters, letters and numbers, at least one of each. PINs are case-sensitive.

Signing in

ask login exchanges your username and PIN for a random token, stored on your machine. Your PIN is never saved. Each device has its own token, and up to 10 devices can be signed in at once.

If the username or PIN is wrong you can enter them again, up to three times. Leave the username blank to cancel. Changing or resetting a PIN, or disabling the account, signs out every device immediately.

Lockouts

Five wrong PIN attempts on a username lock it for 15 minutes. Twenty failures from one network address lock that address. The wait is shown in the error message.

Shared machines

On a lab or shared computer, run ask logout when you are done. It removes your login and clears your ask commands from the shell history, including the up arrow in the window you are using. You can also delete the folder completely.

bash
# Ubuntu / macOS
rm -rf ~/.ask

# Windows Command Prompt
rmdir /s /q %USERPROFILE%\.ask

# Windows PowerShell
Remove-Item -Recurse -Force $HOME\.ask