Table of Contents
Quota
Why is there a quota?
The quota exists only to protect the server, not hinder you in your work. You can always request more. Don't be surprised if we ask why you need it, this isn't intended to give us a reason to say no, just to make sure you don't go doing anything silly. For example, running VM inside your home directory.
If the request is very large we will usually try to accommodate you in some other manner. It helps a lot if you can tell us your goals, so we may help you achieve them.
Check your quota
To check your quota use the command 'csquota' which is just a wrapper script around 'quota' (because bugs). You should see something like this:
user@computer:~$ csquota Filesystem space quota limit grace server.cs.uchicago.edu:/export/homes/user 918M 2000M 2500M 15296
| space | denotes how much space you are currently using. |
|---|---|
| quota | The maximum amount of disk usage a quota user has. |
| limit | Hard limit works only when grace period is set. It specifies the absolute limit on the disk usage, which a quota user can't go beyond his hard limit. |
| grace | The time limit before the soft limit is enforced. |
Ok my quota is full. How do figure out what is using all the disk space
The command du. Move along.
"Ok but for real I don't have time to read the man page right now. I need to get my homework done!"
$ du -csh $HOME/* $HOME/.??* | sort -h | tail 4.0K /home/user/.keras 4.0K /home/user/.lesshst 4.0K /home/user/.python_history 8.0K /home/user/.compiz 136K /home/user/.config 83M /home/user/.gem 87M /home/user/.cache 141M /home/user/distro 320M /home/user/.local 631M total
| du -csh | Calculate file and directory usage. (c) Show total ; (s) recurses down to calculate, but only shows total for input arguments(files or directories) ; (h) human readable file size; |
|---|---|
| $HOME/* | All files, no dot files |
| $HOME/.??* | All files that start with a dot(.) and have at least two characters |
| sort -h | sort the input by human readable file size |
| tail | Only show me the last 10 lines |
Networked vs Local Storage
If you are working with larger datasets we do not recommend you store these in your home directory. Please create yourself a folder in /local on whatever machine you have access to and put your data there.
Generally, your home directory is not going to be great to use for any heavy read and write application.
$ mkdir /local/$USER