Dealing With Disk Quotas

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How can I find out how much disk space I'm using? How do I find out what my disk quota is? I'm over my disk quota. What should I do? Remove Unneeded Files Archive old projects	How do I increase my quota? How can I archive (tar) and compress (zip) files that I will need later? Creating an archive Extracting an archive Are we allowed to store .mp3 or other entertainment files in our CAEDM space?

How can I find out how much disk space I'm using?

There are several ways to find out how much space each of your directories are occupying. The easiest is the UNIX command du. Type man du in an xterm window for more details on how to use it. Just using

du -ka | sort -n

in your home directory will give you a listing of all the files and directories inside the current directory tree with the amount of kilobytes that each file and directory occupies. The du -ka part of the command prints out the kilobyte size of all files and directories at or below the current directory, and sort -n sorts the results so that they are printed in ascending numerical order, smallest to largest. Practically, this means that after typing this command, your largest files and directories will be visible at the bottom of the screen.

How do I find out what my disk quota is?

Log in to the CAEDM Account Manager. Quota information for your account can be found under the "Quota Information" link in the left sidebar.

I'm over my disk quota. What should I do?

Don't panic. There are many ways you can trim down your disk usage. Here are a couple of helpful ones:

Remove Unneeded Files

Be smart about this. Deleting four hundred 10 KB files will bring disk usage down, but it will take you forever to find them. Use the du command to find big files. Usually deleting the largest unneeded file will bring you back within your quota. Look for files named "core." These mostly useless, very large files, are "dumped" when a program exits abnormally. Also delete any unneeded graphic, sound, or video files.

Archive old projects

Do you have large Mentor graphics, viewlogic, web, or other directories? Archive them using tar and gzip if you are no longer using them but would still like to keep a copy around. Even better, burn them onto a CD or store them on a USB disk.

How do I increase my quota?

Generally, you need to talk to CAEDM to increase your quota. This can be done by filling out a request for quota change form. If you are an ECEn graduate student, or if you are doing research for an ECEn professor, then contact the ECEn SysOps. They may be able to give you some more space.

How can I archive (tar) and compress (zip) files that I will need later?

Use tar for both processes -- it's all built into one useful command. The following should acquaint you with the functionality you will need, but you can get a help listing from tar itself by typing man tar in an xterm window.

Creating an archive

Use cd to go to the directory immediately below the directory you want to tar. Let's say that your directory is called ee224. Since you are now in the directory for which ee224 is a subdirectory, type:

tar cvf ee224.tar ee224/

This will create a file named ee224.tar that will be an archive of all of the files in all of the subdirectories of ee224/. That's what the 'c' typed above after 'tar' meant. The 'v' stood for verbose, which is why you get a list of the files that are being put into the archive as it's creating it. The 'f' simply stands for file, and after it you list the file that you want tar to create as the archive file. The last argument is the directory you plan to archive. If you also want to compress the archive in this step, you can easily accomplish this by adding the 'z' option to the tar command statement, as so:

tar czvf ee224.tar.gz ee224/

It is customary to call files that are archived and compressed using tar 'filename.tar.gz' or 'filename.tgz' ('gz' stands for gzipped.) If you follow this convention, should you ever need to use gzip or gunzip to work on this archive, they will function properly. After the archive is completed, you can delete the original files, assuming that is your purpose for archiving them.

rm -r ee224/

Extracting an archive

Put the archive file in the directory in which you want the main subdirectory to appear -- the one that was tarred in the first place. If we are using the same file as above (ee224.tar) then type:

tar xvf ee224.tar

This will create and restore all the files to the ee224/ directory tarred above. The 'x' stands for extract. If you additionally had compressed the archive (naming it ee224.tar.gz in the process), simply add the 'z' option back into the tar command like this:

tar xzvf ee224.tar.gz

Are we allowed to store .mp3 or other entertainment files in our CAEDM space?

Please refer to the CAEDM lab policy.