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Managing CSCI Disk Storage

Storage Limitation

The storage for your CSCI account home directory is physically located on a particular server maintained by CSCI system administrators, referred to as the file server. When you log into a Linux computer in JB-356, JB-358 or JB-359, the local system merges this remote storage with local storage using a protocol called Network File System (NFS). This merge operation is referred to as mounting.

Because every student who takes a CSCI lab course is given a home directory, the amount of disk space available to an individual is constrained. The system administrators maintain a policy of limiting this storage to 75 MB. This storage limitation is enforced by a script that runs periodically; if you exceed this storage limit, the script will shutdown your account. In this case, you will need to talk to the CSCI Help Desk to re-establish access to your account.

Management Tips

Run the du (disk usage) command from within a directory as follows to find out how much disk storage is being consumed by files and subdirectories. (The -h argument means human readable.)

du -h

It helps to filter out small files from the list. You can do this with the following command.

ls -s *|sort -n|tail

There are two types of files that grow large, and thus need management: files indirectly generated by software you use, and files that you create or add to a software project.

Of the files that are generated indirectly by software, the ones that consume the most storage are the browser caches. The following actions will help to reduce the amount of storage consumed by browsing the web.

  • Set your browser cache to a small value.
  • Clear your browser cache prior to logging out.
  • Only use one browser (to avoid adding to more than one cache).

To reduce the storage consumed by a software project you are developing, you can do the following.

  • Store your projects in flash memory.
  • Store your project code in a CVS repository, and delete your working project from CSCI storage before logging out.
  • Transfer files to a laptop or home machine.