Linux Home Directory Disk Space
Networked and Backed-up
Your home directory disk space is networked: you see the same files no matter which linux lab machine you log in to. These files exist on a central file server, not on any lab machine or workstation. This home directory space is also backed up (saved to tape) nightly. Files that have been backed up can be restored from tape on request. However, these disk services require us to limit the amount of space each user can consume.
Shared and Limited
Users share a partition of the disk. We do not impose disk space quotas on our users, to allow for efficient use of the available space, but this means if one user fills their disk partition, no other user of the partition can work until space is freed. Typically, each home directory is likely to be in a 2.8 GB partition shared by 50 other people, which comes to an average of 58MB per user. This is much less than the 100GB that might be found on a home windows PC. It works because each student does not need to install their own software, programs are installed and maintained in other space. It does mean students must try to limit their disk consumption: this amount of space is easily filled with large PS, PDF or MP3 files.Please try to limit your downloading of files to your home directory, if these files can be accessed remotely via a web browser. Large files can be kept on non-backed up local disk space on each machine in /var/tmp. You can also remove files from your home directory by moving them to cdroms. See our Disk FAQ for information about our disk space.