ACCC Online Disk Space Policy

Note: The email quota for mailserv was raised on January, 2010; see Email Space Limits for ACCC Servers.

• Summary of Disk Space Allocations
• Requests for additional disk space
• Disk Space Policy For ACCC Unix Workstations
• -- Current Limits
• -- How to tell how much space you are using
• -- Using scratch disk space
• -- What to Do When You Disk Space is Getting Full

1. Online Storage for ACCC Unix Workstations and the UIC Web Servers, www.uic.edu and www2.uic.edu:
   • For students, accounts on icarus: 20 MB for files and personal Web pages and an additional 20 MB for email (Inbox only, the disk space taken up by other mailboxes counts towards the 20 MB quota for files.)
   • For faculty and staff, accounts on tigger: 25 MB for files and personal Web pages and an additional 50 MB for email (Inbox only, the disk space taken up by other mailboxes counts towards the 25 MB quota for files.)
   • For faculty and sponsored students, accounts on argo: Argo is the ACCC's compute cluster for research and number crunching, so the quotas are much larger: 10 GB = 10,000 MB in your home space. Also, please be reasonable in your use of argo's scratch space; file in the scratch space may be deleted without notice at any time.
     
     
2. For everyone, email accounts on Mailserv: 2 Gigabytes = 2000 MB
   You can have an account on icarus or tigger and on mailserv, but you cannot do email on both. Mailserv is much preferable because it has a much larger online storage allotment. See the Mailserv FAQ for more information.
   
   
3. ACCC Personal Blackboard WebDisk: 100 MB for personal online storage and for publishing Web pages.
   • In the ACCC PC Labs: 100 MB. Your personal Blackboard WebDisk that is mounted automatically for you when you log into a computer in the ACCC public personal computer lab; see Personal WebDisks.
   • On the Web: Blackboard WebDisks can also be accessed from the Web: http://webdisks.uic.edu
   • ADDA/Departmental/Class related Webdisks: In addition to personal WebDisks, the ACCC provides WebDisks for departments, groups, and classes at no charge. These WebDisks can be up to 500 MB and are an ideal solution for sharing files among groups of individuals; see Group WebDisks.

All the files stored on the above spaces are backed up by ACCC.

In general, quotas will be increased one time for free, upon request and based on need. The details depend on the system in question.

• For WebDisks, after an initial, one-time, no-charge, increase, additional amounts of disk space can be purchased in blocks of 10 GB for $200 each.
• For ACCC Unix servers, see What to Do When You Disk Space is Getting Full below.

If you have any questions regarding disk space or to request more, please send an email to consult@uic.edu.

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 January, 2010, 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:

1 GB, 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)

argo, ACCC compute cluster for research and number crunching:

10 GB in your home space and please be reasonable in your use of scratch space; files in the scratch space may be deleted without notice at any time.

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. Oftentimes the problem is email. If you are still using tigger or icarus for email, consider switching to mailserv; it has a much larger disk quota for email. 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. Please do what you can to use the space you have as effectively as possible. But, if you've tried the steps 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.) Be sure to say why you need additional space. 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 (3) 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
• 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.