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Quota FAQs »

Disk quotas on instructional systems are now being enforced. You can check your quota (and usage) by running the quota -v command. See man quota or Checking Quotas for general information.

Q: What is a quota anyway?

A quota is the amount of disk space that you are allowed to use. Since we have many users and limited space, we have to restrict the amount of space that any one person is allowed to use.
Q: How do quotas work?
Once you exceed your quota, you will not be allowed to save additional data on the drive which may cause you to lose work.
You should run the quota command frequently to check what your quota status is.
Q: What is my quota?
Every user gets a certain amount of disk space allocated to them at the beginning of each quarter. ICS majors get a base allocation of 20MB. This limit is increased for students enrolled in certain ICS courses. The quota allocated for each class can be found in Instructional UNIX Computing Assignments. These numbers are a guideline and are adjusted quarterly.
Q: How do I check my quota?
See man quota or Checking Quotas.
Q: How is the size of my quota determined?
Your quota is automatically set based on the courses that the registrar says you are enrolled in.
Q: My quota used to be bigger. Can you change it back?
Sorry, no. Some classes have additional disk space assigned to them. Once you are through with the class, your quota returns to the default amount.
Q: I'm getting "disk quota exceeded" message, what does this mean?
This means that you are using more disk space than is allocated to you. You have a limited amount of time to trim your account before the system locks you out. Try clearing out your Netscape cache or compressing or removing old tar files or old object (.o) files.
Q: What happens if I exceed my quota?
You won't be able to save data in your home directory, and in some cases, you aren't able to login at all.
Q: How do I know how much space is being used by some file or directory?
The du command will display the number of kilobytes contained in a directory or used by a file you specify. For example, 

peteranteater% du -s ~/Mail
25497 /home/panteater/Mail
Q: What can I do to reduce my disk usage?
If you have to save your files, you can download your files to floppy diskette. See the Lab Attendant for help. Or if you still need your files online, you can compress them using tools such as compress. If you use tex or latex, cleantex is a quick way to clean up dvi files. Remove old mail files, and files starting with ",". Try clearing out your Netscape cache or compressing or removing old tar files or old object (.o) files.
Q: Why is my quota different from my friend's quota?
Your friend is probably taking different classes than you.
Q: I have a lot of old classwork. Can I have more space?
Sorry, no. There's not enough space for all of us to keep our old class work on-line. We recommend you download your old class work, or burn a copy onto a CD-ROM. See the Lab Attendant for assistance