ACCC Online Disk Space Policy

Note: The tigger email quotas were raised on May 30, 2007; see below and see Email Space Limits for ACCC Servers.

This document lists current basic allotment of permanent online disk storage space, describes the alternatives available to you when you need additional space, and explains how to use (or ask for) each of them.

Note that mailserv.uic.edu is technically an "ACCC UNIX server", but its quotas are email based. For information about quotas on mailserv, see Email Space Limits for ACCC Servers and the Mailserv FAQ.

All the commands listed in this document have help available; to get help for the command cmdname in UNIX, enter: man cmdname

On Unix, the basic online home directory disk space allotments are called "quotas". ACCC Unix quotas come in pairs:

• The soft quota is the smaller quota of the pair; it represents online disk storage space available to you for the long term. But you can go over your soft quota for a while -- seven days. That's why it's called the soft quota -- because you can exceed it for a while.
• The hard quota is the larger of the pair. It represents the absolute maximum online storage available to your account. It's called the hard quota because the server won't allow you to go over it.

The current home directory disk space quotas, as of March 23, 2005, which on icarus and tigger applies to all the files and data you have on your account except for your email inbox, and on argo and mailserv applies to all your files, period -- for accounts on the ACCC systems are:

icarus UNIX for students:

20 MB soft, 120 MB hard quota (not counting your email Inbox, which has a separate quota)

mailserv, email only:

See Email Space Limits for ACCC Servers and the Mailserv FAQ.

tigger UNIX for faculty and staff:

25 MB (megabytes) soft quota, 125 MB hard quota (not counting your email Inbox, which has a separate quota)

When you're logged in, you will receive a warning message if your total disk space usage is above your soft limit, but below your hard limit; you will not be allowed to exceed your hard limit. You will also receive warning email messages.

On ACCC UNIX, you can save files temporarily in the /scratch directory.

On icarus and tigger, the lifetime of each file in the /scratch directory depends on its size:

1. Check the space taken up by your email mailboxes. The best way to do this is to use the Use the Email Diagnostics and Quota Page. In addition to telling you your quotas and how much disk space you're using, these tools lists the (largest) mailboxes you have on the server, telling you how much space each uses, listing the largest messages in them, and allowing you to download and/or delete entire mailboxes. Or, if you're already logged on to icarus or tigger, you can use the quota command as described in How to Tell How Much Space You're Using above.
   1. On icarus and tigger, the email in your inbox doesn't apply to your disk space quota -- there's a separate quota for inboxes on icarus and tigger. Mailserv has only one quota; the space occupied by all your IMAP mailboxes, including your Inbox, applies to it. See Email Space Limits for ACCC Servers.
   2. If you use IMAP -- with Eudora or any other personal computer email program set up to use IMAP, or with pine or WebMail, which only use IMAP -- then check the mailboxes that you keep on the server.
      • Pruning the mailboxes that you keep online might be all you need to do to go back below your quota.
      • Check in particular for large attachments; download them to your personal computer if you want to keep them or delete them if you don't need them.
      • Also move any email messages that you want to keep indefinitely to your personal computer. The only messages that you should keep on the server are ones that you need to access from anywhere, and only while you're still actively using them. Your ACCC UNIX account is not a suitable place for your email archives.
   3. For more information, see:
      • Managing Your Icarus Email Account
      • Managing Your Tigger Email Account
      • Managing Your Mailserv Email Account
        
        
2. Look into making more efficient use of the space you have, and/or use temporary disk space.
   • Delete unneeded files, especially those that can be easily reproduced such as compiler listings and object files.
   • Use space in the temporary pools on UNIX, use the /scratch directory
   • Store files in compressed form using, use: gzip
   • Download the files to a personal computer and write them out from there to a removable disk.
     
     
3. There's only a limited amount of online disk storage space available and we all have to share it. So please do whatever you can to use the space you already have as effectively as possible. But, if you've tried everything listed above and you still need more space, contact the Client Services Office, Room 2267 SEL at (312)413-0003, or send email to consult@uic.edu. (Undergraduate students must have written support for their requests from their instructor or faculty supervisor.) The available disk space is limited, so obviously smaller requests will more likely to be granted. "Smaller" is up to:

 

on icarus

4 MB soft limit, 8 MB hard limit

on tigger

10 MB soft limit, 20 MB hard limit


4. If your request is for more than can be supplied by step (2) above and if you are a faculty or staff member or a graduate student, then send email to electronic mail address systems@uic.edu with the following information:
• name
• department, and title or position
• phone number (or for graduate students, name and phone of their advisor)
• machine that extra space is requested on (argo, icarus, or tigger)
• amount of space requested and duration of request; note that we are far more likely to fill short-term "loan" requests such as 30 days over long-term requests such as 1 year
• a paragraph explaining why you need the extra space
  
  
5. There's a monthly charge for exceptionally large disk space allocations. This applies to:
• requests on icarus or tigger for 500 MB or more for 6-12 months
• requests on icarus or tigger for 250 MB or more for 12+ months
Because argo is a compute server, requests for larger amounts of disk space on argo are often granted without charge, but time limits may be applied.