[wplug] suggestions on Unix/Linux machines at Pitt labs?

[Chris Romano]

On 4/17/05, Jonathan Billings <jsbillings at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/16/05, Juan Zuluaga <jz31416 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > The Pitt campus in Oakland has some computer labs with
> > Solaris and Linux machines.
> >    As a user I get frustrated by the fact that the
> > space I have available is only the same as my space at
> > the unixs.cis.pitt.edu shared system. If that space is
> > just 10Mb, and I already occupy 5 Mbs with webpages
> > etc, I am just left with 5Mbs (space that gets also
> > reduced, of course, each time I log, with the
> > gnome/cde/mozillatemp files etc).
> 
> I can only assume that the shared space you speak of is in AFS.  You
> should be able to ask for a quota increase, it's set to 10 megabytes
> by default.  Keep in mind that every student gets that much quota,
> multiply 10 megabytes times the total number of students, staff and
> faculty at Pitt.  That's quite a bit of space to manage.
> 
> For the most part, most students don't even use all 10 megabytes of
> space.  So you have to allocate enough for people to be able to use it
> with casual use, but not overallocate it so you end up having to
> manage a bunch of empty volume servers.
> 
> >    3.5 Mbs is no decent space to do anything. Should I
> > be concerned for having to work in /tmp ? I mean,
> > those desktops are very decent machines that should
> > have plenty of space in hard drive.
> 
> AFS isn't space on the hard drive.  It's a network filesystem.  Sure,
> you could save some data on the hard drive, but it wouldn't be saved
> anywhere but that hard drive.
> 
> You might benefit by having your mozilla store it's cache in  /tmp, or
> automatically clear it out every login.
> 
> >    No wonder those computer labs are empty. There must
> > be a way in which Pitt/Sun/RedHat techs could set up
> > those machines differently, allowing users have more
> > space.
> >    As I would like to make an informed suggestion to
> > them, what is the technical issue and how could it be
> > theoretically be solved?
> 
> We provide a similar service here at CMU, and have to deal with
> similar issues.  Usually a call to the helpdesk is all it takes to up
> your quota.  However, I think that pitt has several orders of
> magnitude more students than the school I work for.
> 

I used to work in the computer labs at Pitt, and if I remember
correctly all the Sun boxes get re-imaged every night.  Some time
around 2 or 3 AM.  It's been about 3 years, so I could be wrong.  I am
also talking about the general labs, not the CS labs or anything like
that.  Just the ones in the Cathedral, David Lawrence, Hillman
Library, Sutherland ( I think that's the name, up on the Hill), and
one more.  I forget which one.  I don't know if they do the same thing
with the Linux boxes or not.  There just to be people on the list that
worked at Pitt's help desk and in the Labs.  They might be able to
clarify this.

Chris