Chebucto Community Net's Quota System

In order to provide a stable computer system for all users, it is necessary to have a quota system for user file storage. Services such as mail, news, file handling, and file browsing all use the file storage area(s), and are under the control of the quota system.

Your Home Directory

Each Chebucto Community Net account is given a quota in the home directory to store personal files. These files will include a user Profile, and mail that has been saved into folders. Also included are any other files that have been uploaded or transfered to the user account, such as graphic image files (gifs).

This quota is displayed on the line labeled "/csuite/home". When the limit is reached, malfunctions and lost configuration files may result.

The /var/mail Directory

There is also a quota in the /var/mail directory, which is used to store Pine email messages in the INBOX folder. While this directory's contents are confidential, excess messages in a user's INBOX can adversely affect the performance of the mail system for others as well as the user. Mail messages should be moved out of the INBOX as soon as they have been read. When the /var/mail directory reaches its limit, new mail will bounce rather than entering the user's mailbox.

Below is an example of what a user's quota may look like. The numbers under quota and limit are based on what all Chebucto Community Net users are given when their account was created.

  Filesystem        usage  quota  limit  timeleft  files  quota  limit

  /var/mail          505    500   1000   6.8 days    1     200    400
  /var/csuite/csuite1.0/home
		      94    500   1000              10     200    400

The number under usage represents the number of blocks on the disk surface. The number under files represents the number of file or directory names.
A user is more likely to exceed the quota of usage (blocks) than files. 1 000 blocks is roughly equivalent to 1 megabyte.

Quota and Limit

The disk quota and limits (aka "hard quota" are enforced. Users will experience serious problems when they exceed their quota. User accounts with a quota over the limit will display a log-in warning message. The warning will provide this information:

how far the quota had been exceeded
the location of the quota excess.
the deadline for correcting the quota overrun.

When seven days have elapsed without the account being brought under its quota, the user will no longer have the ability to write new files or to edit existing ones.

Also, the system will automatically prevent the creation or re-saving of any file that would exceed a user's limit. Users will experience numerous random errors when running their account close to its quota limit. Problems can be avoided by staying well below the quota.

We recommend that you use the [go quota] to check your quota regularly.