Quota Policy

General Comments

Disk space is an ever-shrinking commodity. While the price of hard disks for an average computer has dropped and storage capacity has skyrocketed, the exact opposite effect has been seen in the server market. As a result, it's entirely possible that the computer in your dorm room has as much or more disk space than our main file server.

In addition, our ability to backup the server is limited by the relatively slow advance of tape technology. By the start of the semester, we should have more storage available than can fit on the largest tape that we can use with our backup solution.

Please use disk space on the server responsibly. If we have to, we'll impose disk space quotas, but we would prefer to treat everyone as a responsible adult.

Tips & Tricks

Don't install large programs in your account
If you think a particular application might be of interest to others, send mail to system@math.hmc.edu. If we agree that the software seems like it might be useful, we'll install it on the cluster.
Download your mail to your own machine
We currently provide a POP server for that purpose; you can also copy mailbox files directly.
Avoid clogging up /tmp
Don't store files in /tmp—that directory will be cleared periodically (and is generally also cleared when machines are rebooted).
Keep an eye on your disk usage
You can find out how much disk space you're using by cding to your home directory and running the command du -sh, which will report the sum of your disk space usage in human terms—as KB or MB rather than as disk blocks.