Disk usage

You may use the Coli computer systems to store data related to your studies. You may store data on the file server, on the web server, on the mail server and in your Windows profile (if applicable).

As a general guideline students who are majoring in computational linguistics or language science and technology should not use more than 500 MB of disk space, students with computational linguistics as a minor should not use more than 200 MB of disk space, unless there are special circumstances. If you require large amounts of disk space for some important project like your thesis or similar, please contact Sytems Group to create a special project directory for you.

In your home directory on the file server there is a link named "shadow" which points to the "shadow file system". This file system can be used to store temporary or unimportant data. It is not backed up and data which is stored there can be lost at any time. You may store up to 2GB of data there.

At any rate your home directory is not the right place to store your project data. Disregard of these guidelines may result in your account being locked down.

As a Windows user you should store all of your data in the "My Documents" folder. Please do not create folders on your desktop or store data on your desktop as this will increase your Windows profile (winprofile) and you will suffer from severe performance degradation (login and logout will take a very long time). The experienced Windows user may find it interesting to know that the "My Documents" folder points to the "H:\" network drive which is mapped to "\\smb\winhome", your winhome is visible on the file server under ~/win.

Quotas

Disk space is a valuable ressource, in both money and administration. To provide a fair share of disk space for everybody, there exist "quotas", i.e. the amount of disk space you are allowed to use. Currently, these quotas are as following:

• File server: 500MB in home, 2000MB in shadow. File server includes both Linux/MacOS home and Windows "My Documents" folder.

• Web server: 100MB
• Mail server: 200MB
• Windows profile: 200MB

How to find out your current disk usage

• Linux
  Open a Konsole/Terminal session (Applications -> System Tools -> Konsole) and type "xdiskusage ." followed by the <Return> key. For the shadow filesystem type "cd ~/shadow; xdiskusage ." If you delete a file, it is not actually deleted, but moved to the Trash directory. You may need to empty your Trash manually.

• MacOS
  Open a Konsole/Terminal session (Applications -> Tools -> Terminal) and log in to our login server via "ssh -X -Y login.coli.uni-saarland.de" Then type "xdiskusage ." followed by the <Return> key. For the shadow filesystem type "cd ~/shadow; xdiskusage ." If you delete a file, it is not actually deleted, but moved to the Trash directory. You may need to empty your Trash manually.

• Windows
  Open "My Documents", select all icons (CTRL-A), right-click on any icon and select "Properties". For the shadow filesystem: Open "My Documents", right-click "shadow" and select "Properties". You may also use the "DirGraph" program if it is installed on your machine.

• Windows Profile
  Open an Explorer, open "C:\Documents and Settings\<your_user_name>. Select all Icons (CTRL-A), right-click on any icon and select "Properties". Move any data/folders from your Desktop to your Winhome.

• Web server
  Open a terminal session (see above for Linux and MacOS, Windows users may use the putty client) and connect to the web server via "ssh httpd.coli.uni-saarland.de". Then type "du -h ."

• Mail server
  Login to the Coli webmail server, your usage is shown in the top left corner. Do not be confused or tempted by the larger quota displayed there; this is a hard quota, upon reaching of which the mail server will stop accepting emails for your account altogether. If you ever reach that hard quota you may be permanently banned from the system. To ensure that your emails are actually deleted, you will need to select "Purge Trash".