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From: ggs@ulysses.UUCP (Griff Smith)
Newsgroups: net.micro.att,net.unix-wizards
Subject: Re: disk quotas
Message-ID: <1025@ulysses.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 31-Jul-85 19:07:14 EDT
Article-I.D.: ulysses.1025
Posted: Wed Jul 31 19:07:14 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 1-Aug-85 21:28:12 EDT
References: <2067@ucf-cs.UUCP> <363@cuae2.UUCP> <2423@sun.uucp> <5819@utzoo.UUCP> <133@maynard.UUCP> <396@cuae2.UUCP>
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 23
Xref: linus net.micro.att:374 net.unix-wizards:11295

> In article <133@maynard.UUCP> campbell@maynard.UUCP (Larry Campbell) writes:
> >Hostile users aren't the only good reason to have quotas.  What about
> >buggy software that gets into an infinite loop writing to a file?
> 
> That's what "ulimit" is for.  Don't use an SST when roller skates will do.

If you haven't worked where people use UNIX systems to do real data
processing, don't propose "ulimit" as an alternative to quotas.  A 50
meg file won't even cause a batted eyelash here.  When you lose half a
day because you forgot to cast the proper spell to bypass a per-file
size limit, per-file-system limits look much more attractive.  The BSD
quota system also supplies detailed, quickly-accessible, reports of
disk usage.  I don't have time to use combinations of "find" and "du"
when the console is screaming "disk full".  We set our quotas very high,
but they are convenient fire walls.  The first thing we do to "ulimit"
is to set it to a huge value; the time lost due to hitting the standard
value is just not worth it.
-- 

Griff Smith	AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Phone:		(201) 582-7736
Internet:	ggs@ulysses.uucp
UUCP:		ulysses!ggs  ( {allegra|ihnp4}!ulysses!ggs )