Disk Quotas

There is a limited amount of disk space available, and this space must be shared by all of the users. In an attempt to ensure that all students have adequate space to complete their assignments, a disk quota system has been put into effect. The quotas allotted to students should be sufficient to carry out their programming assignments. However, if you create many extra files or do not remove unnecessary files, you may exceed your quota.

When you login to your account, the quota command, fs listquota, is automatically run for you and displayed in the Xstats box. This command returns some statistics on your current disk usage:

[bbadger@demo01] (1)$ fs listquota

Volume Name                   Quota      Used %Used   Partition
u.bbadger                    200000    125072   62%         65%

Each user is assigned a volume on the disk to store their files. Several volumes are stored on each disk partition. The Quota field shows your disk quota, that is, the amount of disk space, in kilobytes, that you are alloted. The Used field indicates how many kilobytes of disk space you are currently using. The %Used field shows what percentof your quota you are currently using, and the Partition field shows what percent of the entire partition is currently being used by all of the volumes stored on it. Do not worry if you get a warning message saying the partition is nearly full. You will still have the same alloted quota.

It is important to make sure that you do not exceed your disk quota. If you should go over your disk quota (i.e. the Used field equals or exceeds the Quota field), the quota system will not allow you to create any new files until you reduce your disk usage. You can run the command fs listquota at any time to see your current disk usage.