Information Technology Services has a 40MB size limit on all student file server accounts. Users who are over this quota are notified by emails sent nightly to the Bethel email address of any student over the quota. There are two types of quotas - soft and hard. The soft quota is currently 40MB, while the hard quota is 100MB. Upon going above the soft quota, only email warnings are sent for the first two weeks. If a user is above the hard quota, or above the soft quota for a continuous 2 week period, the user's home directory permissions are set to read and delete only, until it is brouht below 40MB, or two weeks have passed. After two weeks of having a locked home directory, all the contents are removed. Users who significantly overshoot the quota may have their directory immediately locked, and will then be notified by the HelpDesk.
By default Internet Explorer wants to use several hundred megabytes for it's cache. We do run routine sweeps on the servers to clean these out, but a common symptom is very slow logouts. Instructions on how to fix this are in KB Article 17.
Most desktop wallpapers are large, and some have been known to push people over quota. The Help Desk is able to help you determine if this is your problem.
Many times after installing software the installer is left on the desktop. These often take up a significant amount of room, and can usually be downloaded again.
Outlook express often caches large amounts of data locally on the profile. We do not support Outlook Express for student use, however the Help Desk should be able to assist in setting it to not cache as much.
Over quota notifications are sent by email to the Bethel email address associated with a username. Bethel's policy is that all Bethel users are responsible for any official announcements or notifications sent to their Bethel email address. If you do not use your Bethel email account, you are responsible for forwarding it to and account that you do check regularly.
Many users have a significant amount of data storage needs. If you are unsure about what you may need or have the need to retain more than 40 MB of data, we do provide ways for you to archive files to either CD-R or ZIP disk. There are CD burners and ZIP drives available for student use in CC120, as well as some other places on campus. More information is available in CC120.
Bethel's IT Staff is always trying to balance what is needed by students against what it costs to store it, and has determined 40MB is plenty in almost every situation. As a side note this is double the value it was before the Avalon upgrade in June 2002. One of the biggest things that has to be considered is the difference between "online" and "offline" storage. Avalon is what is refered to as online storage, where CD archives are offline storage. The biggest cost in maintaining reliable online storage is not the actual drives or even the redundant drives (all home directories are on a system known as RAID 5, the student volumes having 5 drives of which any one can fail and the system will continue running), but the backup tapes. Bethel runs backups on all the file servers every night that have the data that has changed since the previous night, and archives them in case of server disaster, accidental deletion, or file corruption. Every so often we have to do a full backup, which is a complete copy of everything. Backup tapes are not cheap, and we invest significant resources into maintaining complete backups to help ensure that important work is not lost. When people save large amounts of unnecessary data to the servers, Bethel's cost grows much faster than storage on a machine where backups are generally not performed (such as a home machine) or on offline/archival storage. You can help us keep cost low and help us justify allowing more space per student if unnecessary or older files are archived to CD-R or other media rather than storing it on the server.
If you have any questions or concerns, contact the ITS HelpDesk at 651-638-6500 or visit http://helpdesk.its.bethel.edu/.