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Grex > Coop11 > #36: Increasing User Disk Space Maximum | |
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| Author |
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rcurl
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Increasing User Disk Space Maximum
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Oct 19 16:27 UTC 1998 |
I received a gentle reminder that my disk use had exceeded 1 MB, and was
asked to reduce it. I recall, though, that disk cost has gotten pretty
affordable, so offered (tongue in cheek) to buy Grex another MB of disk
for my use. I would donate the cost - all $0.075 worth.
Seriously, though, should we consider increasing the maximum disk space
per user? I do clear out my space periodicially, and am conscious of the
potential problem, but with increased use of the system for various purposes,
more space for everyone would seem logical - and affordable.
What do you think?
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| 111 responses total. |
cmcgee
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response 1 of 111:
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Oct 19 20:44 UTC 1998 |
I think I was just lazy and cluttered. I too received the message, and set
about cleaning out my (carefully foldered) mail area. Way too many messages
from the Grex catsitting network were bulking up my storage area. Along with
way too many emails from my cousin, etc, etc. I don't think I want to see
us buy storage space when we have other hardware needs, and no real serious
calls for "more space, please".
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scg
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response 2 of 111:
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Oct 19 22:04 UTC 1998 |
Disk is cheap, and more disk would definitely be a good thing. That said,
adding disks as things fill up takes a fair bit of work, and staff time isn't
exactly a plentiful resource for us.
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rickyb
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response 3 of 111:
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Oct 20 01:34 UTC 1998 |
i don't think I've ever gotten near maxing out my allocation of space, either
here, or back when I was active (much more than I am here at grex) at mnet.
That being said, and at the risk of creating drift, perhaps there is some way
to add space for <shudder the thought> graphics. No, not to make grex another
image-laden web site, but for things like a user photo galleray in the
photography conference, or for schematic/sketches of ideas in the
do-it-yourself conference, science.cf, etc... There _are_ times where a
picture is worth 1K words, and a grex art gallery (with a rotating collection)
of users drawings, photos or other graphical representations of their creative
output seems like it could be a nice evolutionary addition to grex without
risking assaulting the essence of the system.
<sorry...drift off>
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remmers
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response 4 of 111:
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Oct 20 13:48 UTC 1998 |
The problem with graphics is not the space to store them so much as the
bandwidth it takes to transmit them over our internet link. For that
reason, even the graphics used on Grex's official web pages and in
Backtalk are stored on another server - hvcn.org currently, I believe.
And the cost of upgrading our network bandwidth would be substantially
more than buying more disk.
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rcurl
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response 5 of 111:
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Oct 20 15:24 UTC 1998 |
Obviously some users don't need more than 1 M disk space and others do.
1 M is itself pretty arbitrary. Why not 0.5 or 2? The best way is to a)
find out if many users could make good use of a bigger disk allotment,
and b) what it would cost if the need is there. Would there be any
benefit to the general operation of the system to have more disk space?
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lilmo
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response 6 of 111:
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Oct 20 15:48 UTC 1998 |
Even more relevant: would increasing the limit right now actually cause
problems? Would the user disk fill up?
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rcurl
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response 7 of 111:
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Oct 20 15:50 UTC 1998 |
If one runs over 1 M now and then a (automated?) message is sent saying
disk space is short so please reduce your usage to below 1 M. That implies
that a larger limit now would cause problems, but staff could provide
more details on this.
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keesan
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response 8 of 111:
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Oct 21 18:08 UTC 1998 |
Does this 1M include website?
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mta
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response 9 of 111:
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Oct 21 19:24 UTC 1998 |
I'm pretty certain your web site is included in the 1M, yes.
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rcurl
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response 10 of 111:
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Oct 21 20:55 UTC 1998 |
Whatever is in your directory, including mail. Your web page is in your
directory.
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keesan
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response 11 of 111:
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Oct 22 01:42 UTC 1998 |
Looks like I should accept someone's offer to use their website for
'publishing' a book online, then. Or buy another account instead of straight
donations to grex. Can I buy two accounts and consolidate them, or use Jim's
space too?
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rcurl
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response 12 of 111:
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Oct 22 04:56 UTC 1998 |
Grex doesn't sell accounts.
You could spread the web pages for a longer document across several
accounts and simply link the pages as needed. There is no need for web
pages to all be in one directory.
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davel
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response 13 of 111:
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Oct 22 11:40 UTC 1998 |
Unless I'm mistaken, what Rane said is not quite right (or at least
misleading). I don't think your mailbox counts in the 1MB limit. (Any mail
you save into your own directory does, of course.)
It's possible that someone programmed it the way Rane said, though.
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remmers
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response 14 of 111:
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Oct 22 14:02 UTC 1998 |
Users' mailboxes have a separate 1MB limit, I believe.
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remmers
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response 15 of 111:
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Oct 22 14:07 UTC 1998 |
Re resp:12 - Technically, you could spread a website on Grex over
several different accounts. If the accounts all belong to the same
person and the website takes up more than 1MB of space, it would violate
the spirit of the 1MB per user policy though, but in a way that is not
easily detectable. Yet another example of the honor system, I guess.
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rcurl
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response 16 of 111:
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Oct 22 15:03 UTC 1998 |
What does du report? It lists the size of ./www. ./.cfdir, ./mail
and just . . I thought just . was the total and included ./mail. If
not, how do I find out my disk space use that counts toward the
1 M limit (and the separate mail one). (When the "your disk space use
exceeds 1 M" (or something like that) message is sent, it does not
report directory and mail space separately.)
I gather from things I have read that some users have several accounts,
and would think their cumulatives could easily exceed 1MB. Is there a
directive anywhere in newuser or elsewhere saying an individual user is
not allowed to have more than one account? If such does not exist, then
there is no "spirit" of 1MB to violate. (I have only one account as a
member.)
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remmers
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response 17 of 111:
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Oct 22 16:37 UTC 1998 |
There's no policy on the number of accounts a user may have. However,
each user is asked to keep their disk space to under 1MB (emphasis
on "user", as contrasted with "account").
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janc
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response 18 of 111:
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Oct 22 16:53 UTC 1998 |
We've certainly had users use more disk space than that for long periods
of time. We are mostly into encouraging people to stick to it rather
than being absolutely rigid, even when they are making some sane use of
the space. However, we reserve the right to be rigid.
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krj
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response 19 of 111:
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Oct 22 18:35 UTC 1998 |
Here's a carelessly-tossed-off proposal. Perhaps Grex should
grant extra amounts of "special project" disk space for things
like keesan's book.
But most such special projects are likely to involve graphics
and thus really need to go somewhere with better connectivity.
Here's another rude thought. We'd have the connectivity to support
limited web publishing efforts if we didn't allow e-mail to chew up
so much of the link.
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rcurl
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response 20 of 111:
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Oct 22 19:02 UTC 1998 |
Re #17: that should be stated more explicitly somewhere. "users" can
easily be thought of as IDs.
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steve
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response 21 of 111:
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Oct 23 00:50 UTC 1998 |
Actually, the 1M limit we created long ago was made at least in
part by various people looking out at other places on the net, seeing
wha they did. I remember seeing Nyx at 100K per person and wanting
to do a little better than that.
Also, what Ken said in #19 is something we decided a while ago.
If people wanted more disk, they could ask and if it wasn't for
"eggdrop" like reasons we'd try to accodomate them.
The real problem on Grex right now is simply the sheer numbers of
people on these days. Given that many, many people use us, the
number of people who go beyond the 1M limit has only grown. I've
talked to several people who didn't understand that 1M even meant,
and had no idea what the size of their mailbox was, and what it all
meant. Thats why we have the problem we currently have--the large
number of users, couples with the fact that an ever higher percentage
of them know very little about the technical side of things. I think
thats good, in that we're geting non computer nerds here, but it does
have this side effect of folks not realizing what they're doing.
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rcurl
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response 22 of 111:
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Oct 23 05:19 UTC 1998 |
Would it help to have a semiautomatic deletion of old mail unless the
user wishes to keep it? I can imagine that a lot is just left accumulated
with no intention to ever look at it.
Besides that, though, since disk is so ridiculously cheap, why not
just get bigger disk? Make the allocation 2MB, say - just to be nice.
Coupled with some gentle version of deleting old mail for users, total
used disk space might not increase much at all.
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remmers
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response 23 of 111:
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Oct 23 11:16 UTC 1998 |
A number of reasonable suggestions in the last few responses. The main
bottleneck to implementing them is, I suspect, staff time more than
anything else.
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rcurl
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response 24 of 111:
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Oct 23 19:38 UTC 1998 |
(That is, unfortunately, what can lead to apathy on the part of members
that invest thought into creating potentially good ideas, which then get
ignored because there is no one with time to implement them. I have seen
organizations fall apart because of this problem. What we also sometimes
see is those that can, carrying out their own ideas - another blow to the
interest of others in participating.....just some idle musing.)
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