Disk quota

We enforce disk quotas on the /home filesystem to prevent users accidentally using large amounts of disk space. The default soft quota for new accounts is 256MB; if you need more space, you should open a request in the Toolserver project in JIRA.

You can check your quota at any time using the quota command:

% quota -v Disk quotas for rriver (uid 500): Filesystem    usage  quota  limit    timeleft  files  quota  limit    timeleft /home          2.1G   3.2G   6.5G              83218      0      0

If you exceed your disk quota, a message similar to this will be displayed when you log in:

Over disk quota on /home, remove 165.1M within 6.9 days

There are two separate quotas for each user: soft and hard. The soft quota is the one you usually need to be concerned with; your disk usage should generally stay below the soft quota. It is possible to exceed your soft quota, up to the limit of the hard quota, for up to 7 days (called the grace period); this is useful if you need more disk space temporarily. After 7 days, if your usage is still above the soft quota, you will be unable to create any more files until you reduce your usage to below the soft quota. The hard quota is usually set to twice the soft quota, and is the absolute limit on your disk usage; it is impossible to use more disk space than the hard quota allows.