Quota
From OCF Help
Contents |
Print Quota
Every OCF account is granted a number of printing pages per term. The default printing quotas are listed in the following table:
| Term | Pages |
| Fall Semester | 250 |
| Spring Semester | 250 |
| Summer | 125 |
Print quota does not carry over from one term to the next. Also, please note that double-sided printing counts as two pages.
Checking your print quota
To check your paper quota, you may use any of the following options:
- Login via SSH and use the paper command.
- Use our web interface.
- If you are in the OCF laboratory on one of our Windows computers, there is a shortcut called "Check print quota" on the desktop that tells you your print quota at the time of login.
Disk Quota
Disk quota refers to the amount of disk space allocated to each user for a given OCF service. If you are over quota, this means you are using too much space for a given service. The current default quota for each service (or group of services) is shown in the table below. Note that each row of services in the table has an independently-maintained quota.
| Service | Soft Limit | Hard Limit |
| Disk and web space | 2.0 GB (2048 MB) | 2.5 GB (2560 MB) |
| Email inbox | 10 MB | 35 MB |
The soft limit is basically another term for quota; it's the amount of space you're allocated. The hard limit is the amount of space you can use without an operation (such as uploading a file) failing. You can use an amount of disk space over your soft limit, but below your hard limit, for a grace period of seven days. After this grace period ends, certain types of disk operations (such as creating a new file, or writing to an existing file) will fail. See the Examples section for more concrete details of how this works.
Checking your disk quota
Simply log into an OCF machine via SSH and run the quota command. Alternatively, this page provides a web-accessible interface to the quota command.
An example transcript is shown below. Note that the numbers do not necessarily reflect what you will see with your account.
Disk quotas for <user> (uid <uid>): Filesystem usage quota limit timeleft files quota limit timeleft /var/mail 1184 10000 25000 0 0 0 /home 50000 200000 220000 5068 0 0 /services 50000 200000 220000 5068 0 0
Here, /var/mail denotes your email inbox, and /home and /services denote your home directory and webspace. Note that the numbers in /home and /services match exactly. This is because they in fact share one combined quota. Consequently, the amount of free space left for home directory and webspace usage is not (200000 - 50000) KB = 150 MB each; it is 150 MB total.
The usage column denotes your soft limit, and the limit column your hard limit. The timeleft column shows the status of your grace period if you are over your soft limit; it is blank otherwise.
Examples
The following examples should clarify how the quota system works. We'll use the modified quota numbers in the table below for simplicity:
|
Example only |
||
| Service | Soft Limit | Hard Limit |
| Disk and web space | 100 MB | 110 MB |
| Email inbox | 10 MB | 20 MB |
Now for the examples. Note that each example below will be a continuation of the preceding example.
Example 1. Suppose you are using 99 MB in your home directory, and 0 MB in your webspace. If you add 5 MB of files to your webspace, then you will now be using 104 MB in the combined home/web quota. This is above your soft limit of 100 MB, so the clock will start on your seven-day grace period.
Example 2. Suppose you now add a 6 MB file to your webspace. Since you were using 104 MB, this operation will (probably) succeed because you will now have reached your hard limit of 110 MB. If you try to add any more files to your home directory or webspace at this point, the operation will fail.
Example 3. Suppose that it has now been seven days since you first went over your home/web soft limit. The quota command will now indicate that your grace period has expired. Suppose you now delete the 6 MB file you last added. Your grace period will still be expired, since you have still been over your soft limit for too long. Attempting to add a 1 MB file at this point will fail even though you would be under your hard limit; again, this is because your grace period has expired. Note that file deletion is allowed when the grace period is expired, but other operations such as creating a new file or writing to an existing file are not allowed.
Example 4. Suppose the grace period is still expired on your home/web quota. Now, you are using 0 MB of your email inbox (it was empty), but someone sends you a file with a 15 MB attachment. This puts you over the soft limit on your email inbox quota, and your seven-day grace period begins. You can still receive another 1 MB attachment at this point, since you will still be below your hard limit of 20 MB. This example demonstrates that home/web and email quotas are independent; i.e., your home/web quota being expired does not affect the status of your email quota.
Example 5. Suppose your home/web usage is still at 104 MB, and the grace period is still expired. If you now delete 5 MB worth of files from either your home directory or webspace, then you will be back at 99 MB, and the grace period will no longer be expired. If you add back another 5 MB of files, another seven-day grace period will begin.
