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Quota (or quotas) is the term to describe disk usage
at PRIMUS. Every Shell, Standard or Virtual Host/FTP account has a
quota associated with it. To describe how quota works, we
need to jump into UNIX for a short while. Please do not
be afraid! This will be a simple explanation and I hope
the reader will understand more after reading this page.
Quota, or disk usage, is associated with two aspects
of a UNIX system: usernames and filesystems. A username
is what a customer uses to log in. As an example, my
email address is mfs@primushost.com, so my username
is mfs. For our SLIP/PPP customers, you must
precede your username with a P, S, or C in
order to dialin.
The prefix is not part of your username. It just lets our
software know it needs to run PPP, SLIP or CSLIP for you.
Your username is important because it identifies you to
the UNIX system.
A filesystem is the term to describe how UNIX
organizes the disk space on hard drives. This process
resembles the DOS and Windows drive letter system (A:,
B:, C:, etc), but is much more robust and is designed for
a multi-user operating system. There are several file
systems on a UNIX system, but there are only a few that
need concern our users. The rest are system related.
Currently, the important file systems are those that start
with /home.
The /home filesystems are where our
users' home directories are stored. If you ever connect
to PRIMUS via telnet or if you are a Shell customer,
then your home directory is where you are placed when you
log in. This is currently also the place where your new
email is stored as it comes in and where html files are
placed. A
customer will only have one home directory per account.
/home/ftp is where the PRIMUS ftp
directories and files are stored. Our customers may have
files here if they requested anonymous
ftp space or if they have a Virtual FTP site.
Now here is the important part: every username has a
quota for each filesystem. The quota is in megabytes and
that is the maximum amount of storage a user has in that
filesystem. Please keep in mind that this quota is only
on the PRIMUS systems and does not affect a customer's
home or work computer at all.
The Policy
Every PRIMUS Shell, Standard and Virtual Host/FTP account has a
disk quota value. This quota value is the disk quota for
the account's username on every filesystem on the
PRIMUS servers which the customer has access to. A
customer may request that a username have more disk quota
on any PRIMUS filesystem than the account's default
disk quota value. However there is a small monthly fee
based on the amount of extra disk space requested. All
values are in megabytes.
It is the responsibility of the customer to
keep track of the account's disk usage.
For most users, this should not be cause for great
concern. However, please note that the account's home
directory is currently where new email is stored for the
account. If the home directory filesystem is at the
account's quota limit, then new email will be returned
to the sender as undeliverable. If the home directory
filesystem is at the account's quota limit and we notice
(for example, we send an invoice and it gets bounced back
to us), then we will add enough quota to notify you via
email that you should clean out your directory. If you do
not wish to keep this added quota, you must notify us,
otherwise the
added quota will show up on your next invoice at our
regular fee. Please note that it is possible that we will
not notice that you are over your quota, and thus your
email will bounce until you are able to get your usage
back under your set quota.
To check your account's current disk usage, you must
either telnet to the host.
At the % prompt
type: quota -v or or vxquota -v This command will output
something like the following:
| Disk
quotas for test (uid 111): |
| Filesystem |
usage |
quota
limit |
time left |
files |
quota
limit |
time left |
| /home/m |
5733 |
10240 |
11264 |
103 |
0 |
0 |
| /home/ftp |
62 |
10240 |
11264 |
2 |
0 |
0 |
| /home/web |
0 |
10240 |
11264 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
The first line says that the output is showing the disk
quotas for the username test. The rest of the
output is divided into a table. The rows are the current
PRIMUS filesystems and the columns show the stats for
each filesystem.
- Filesystem is the name of the
filesystem
- usage is the amount of disk
space currently being used in each filesystem in
kilobytes.
- quota is the account's disk
quota for each filesystem in kilobytes.
- limit is the hard
disk quota for each filesystem (see below) in
kilobytes.
- timeleft is the amount of time
before writes are disallowed (see below).
- files is the number of files in
each filesystem.
- The rest of the columns are not used and can be
ignored.
Please note you can convert the numbers is kilobytes
to megabytes by dividing them by 1024.
The hard disk quota is a buffer space we provide to
our users. It is always one megabyte greater than the
account's disk quota value. When a user crosses the disk
quota for that filesystem, the system will allow the
write to disk to complete if the account's usage does not
cross the hard limit for that filesystem. If the user
attempts to save/create a file that will put the disk
usage over the hard limit, the write will fail and data
will be lost. Thus the account has one megabyte of
breathing room. If a user ever goes over an account's
disk quota, the system will send a warning to the Shell
screen.
When a user crosses the disk quota value, but not the
hard quota limit, the system starts a timer. The user has
two days to get the account's disk usage below the disk
quota. If this does not happen in two days, any attempt
to write to disk on that filesystem will fail as
explained above. This is what the timeleft
column displays.
If you have any questions on the PRIMUS
Disk Quota Policy please let us know by either
emailing us at support@primushost.com
or by calling us at 781-586-6100.
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