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Edlab Quota & Storage

When your CS edlab account is created, you are allotted a personal disk quota of 700MB on the edlab servers. This space is given to your for storage of software preferences (such as GUI settings etc), and personal files. On top of this personal quota, directories for each edlab course you are enrolled in will be created for you, the contents of which will not count towards your personal edlab quota. The size of these course directories is decided by the course administrator, and usually depends on what you will be doing during the course (i.e. a course in which you will be writing source code should require less space than a graphics oriented course).

Managing disk quota

Exceeding your disk quota may cause problems with your access to edlab machines. As such, it is recommended that you frequently use the quota command at the linux command line, to keep track of your personal quota usage. If your usage is approaching the quota limit of 700MB, you should remove or rearrange your files. If you are unsure of what files are using your quota, try the following:

• Empty your web browser's cache
• Use the command find ~/ -type f -size +5000k -exec ls -lh {} \; at the linux command line. This will find all files under your home directory (not including course directories) that exceed 5MB in space
• Remove any large, unnecessary files. This usually includes documents or media downloads
• Expunge files in ~/.local/share/Trash either from the trash can GUI interface, or on the command line:
  find ~/.local/share/Trash -type f -exec rm {} \;
• Move any course related files/directories to the appropriate course directory
• In Ubuntu, remove any old OSX files which are no longer needed: rm -r Library/*

Common problems associated with exceeding disk quota

Exceeding your disk quota can cause a variety of problems, and some of these may persist after you have cleared up you files. See the table below for common problems, their likely causes, and how to fix them.

Problem	Likely Cause	Fix
Can't save a file	Quota exceeded	Free some space! (see above)
Linux GUI (Gnome) won't start up	GUI config files were corrupted while quota was full	Rename the directory ~/.gnome2 ( mv ~/.gnome2 newdirname ) and re-login. Gnome should start as though you have never logged in to it before; note that custom settings will be lost. If issues continue, do the same with directories ~/.nautilus, ~/.gnome & ~/gnome_private (one at a time), if they exist.