Do you run Unix without disk quotas?

[Douglas Lee Schales]

In article <28961 at cs.yale.edu> anselmo-ed at CS.YALE.EDU (Ed Anselmo) writes:
   >>>>> On 15 Feb 91 17:00:46 GMT, timcc at csv.viccol.edu.au said:

   Tim> I am soliciting opinions from administrators of Unix systems with
   Tim> a large number of users (undergraduate students to be specific),
   Tim> but no disk quota mechanism.

   We don't run quota's on any of our machines here.

   Willful ignorance; Public humiliation; daily posting of the stats from
   "df" and a list of the "heavy disk users" (in our case accounts using
   > 5MB) to a local newsgroup.

   When the CS majors' partition fills up, it's their fault.  We'll post
   a quick message to a local newsgroup.  Since none of the majors can
   get any work done, typically space gets freed up quickly.

   They always seem to be able to come up with an extra 15-20 MB on
   demand when the partition fills.  Amazing.

   Non-majors taking CS classes get accounts on another partition.  Still
   no disk quotas, but instructors and TA's typically keep watch on the
   disk usage of their class accounts.


I'll agree to most of that, as I ran a site in exactly this manner.  It *is*
quite amazing how quickly users can clear 15-20MB's when they need it.  The
problem with this is that *1* user can create havoc for all of the other
users on this partition.  It is hardly fair that these users aren't able to
work because one person has filled up the partition.  Even though everyone
may know who is causing the problem, this won't help them with their project
which is due the next day.

We use quotas here.  The biggest headache is keeping track of a person's quota
when they are moved to a different partition... zap the old one quota, create
a quota on the new partition.

Doug.
-----
Douglas Lee Schales
schales at cs.tamu.edu