Over quota message on Unix

Personal Filestore Quota

If you use more than the amount of space you are allowed in your personal filestore, (e.g. by saving lots of mail messages), you may not be able to use your account fully until you have reduced the amount of space you are using.

If you go over your quota, when you log on you will see a message like this:

Over disk quota on /home/ufs1, remove 11K within 7.0 days
%

This means that you need to remove at least 11 Kilobytes of files to return to below quota.

Checking your quota

You can find out how much quota you have and how much you are using by typing quota -system at the Unix prompt. You will then see a screen as below:

	% quota -v
	Disk quotas for fergusm1 (uid 10957):
	Filesystem     usage  quota  limit    timeleft  
	/home/ufs1       211    200    220    7.0 days     
	%

The following information is given in the respective columns:

Filesystem:	the location of your files
Usage:	The space you are using (in Kilobytes)
Quota:	The space you are allowed to use (in Kilobytes)
Limit:	The maximum space you can use before the system stops you from saving files
Timeleft:	Time you have in which to reduce your usage

If you have saved a lot of mail messages, that is probably the reason why you are over quota. You should delete any unwanted messages from your mail folders using the mail program.

Alternatively, you may have stored other files in your personal filestore area which are causing you to exceed your quota. (This will be the case for students who use Unix for programming and other functions as well as mail.)

Checking the files you have

You can check the files you have and their sizes by typing: ls -l at the Unix prompt. You will then see a screen like this:

  % ls -l
  total 392
  -rw-r--r--   1 fergusm1 ug         10416 Jul 29 14:17 bigfile
  drwx------   2 fergusm1 ug           512 Jul 27 17:46 mail
  -rw-r--r--   1 fergusm1 ug         75264 Jul 29 14:17 otherfile
  -rw-r--r--   1 fergusm1 ug          8883 Jul 29 14:17 test1
  %

(The letters used here are L and S but in lower case)

The numbers that precede the dates indicate the sizes of the files in bytes. The file here called bigfile is over ten thousand bytes (i.e. over 10 Kilobytes).

Directories

If there is a d at the beginning of the line, as with mail above, then that is a directory, or folder, containing other files. The size given for a directory is always the same and does not tell you the sizes of all the files within it.

To check the size of the files in a directory, type:

	ls -l directoryname

E.g. to check the size of the files in your mail directory type: ls -l mail . This will show you the size of your mail folders in Kilobytes. If they are too large, you will have to delete some messages using the mail program (elm). DO NOT just delete files from your mail directory using the rm command described below or you will delete all your messages!

You can also check the contents of a directory by using the change directory command to move into that directory. At the prompt type:

	cd directoryname

You can then list the files within that directory by typing ls -l as above.

To return to your home directory just type:

	cd

Checking the contents of files

Before deleting files, you may want to check their contents. You can do this by typing:

	less filename

at the Unix prompt (where filename = the actual name of the file), then pressing Return.
The contents of the file will then be displayed one 'page' at a time, the same as reading mail messages.
To see the next page, press the space bar. To stop reading, press q.

Deleting files

In order to return to below your quota you will need to remove files whose sizes add up to the excess. To delete a file, you need to type the command:

	rm filename

(rm is short for remove)

If the file is in a directory, either change to that directory or type the name of the directory and the file, e.g.:

	rm temp/testfile

Last updated: Monday, 08-Nov-2010 20:11:05 GMT

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