Block Limit Reached for UD Sun Ray Terminals

The disk file system with all your Unix files is contrained by a quota system. When your block limit is reached you are over quota. Usually, you will get an error message such as "write: Disc quota exceeded" when a application attempts to write beyond the quota limit, and you will get the message "block limit reached" every time you log on to the system. Unfortunately, these messages are often lost, and not displayed when using the Java Desktop System.

Contents

• Logon in a Failsafe Session
• Checking quota limits
• Listing all files sorted by size
• Special directories
• Special files
• Request an increase in quota limits

Logon in a Failsafe Session

If your block limit is reached, you will not be able to log on to the Sun Ray terminals using the Java Desktop System. But you can log on using the Failsafe Session option.

You should see one terminal window in the upper-left corner of the screen. with a prompt on the Sun Ray server that was shown in your welcome message.

Block limit reached on /home/usra
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.10      Generic January 2005
vivaldi.udel.edu% _

If you see the message Block limit reached, you need to delete some files to get you under your quota limit. Even if you do not see the error message, you may still be close to being over quota.

Checking quota limits

Check your quota limits with the quota -v command:

vivaldi.udel.edu% quota -v
Disk quotas for traine (uid 19646):
Filesystem     usage  quota  limit    timeleft  files  quota  limit    timeleft
/home/usra    102396 102400 102400               1138  76800  76800            

In this last case the usage is just 4K less then the limit. The block size is 4K, so this means the last file written to your account is probably incomplete. Incomplete files will cause erratic behavior with Java Desktop system, and cause problems with packages such as Matlab or Eclipse.

If the incomplete file is the .Xauthority file, you cannot logon using the Sun Rays in the Java Desktop System, but you still can login using the Failsafe Session option.

Listing all files sorted by size

Use the command

du -ak | sort -n

Here are the last 10 lines of the complete list from a Failsafe Session window.

1256    ./.matlab
1476    ./.staroffice7/user
1708    ./.mozilla/firefox/cwqlyqss.default/XPC.mfasl
2748    ./.staroffice7
4464    ./.mozilla/firefox/cwqlyqss.default/urlclassifier2.sqlite
8248    ./.mozilla/firefox/cwqlyqss.default
8264    ./.mozilla/firefox
8268    ./.mozilla
85616   ./download.zip
103792  .

Each line in the list contains a directory or file. The very last (largest) number is the disk usage for your home directory (.). In the above case, there is one file in the home directory named "download.zip", which accounts for more than 85% of the total usage. Remove this file and your usage will be well under your quota limit.

rm ./download.zip

Continuing to look at smaller files, you see hidden directories, which begin with a dot. These are where preference files and history lists are kept. History lists can get large over time as you use a package repeatedly, and should be checked periodically.

Special directories

Special directories to look for in the sorted list shown above:

.mozilla	Hidden directory with browser files including Firefox.
.staroffice7	Hidden directory with StarOffice files.
.matlab	Hidden directory with Matlab files including all older versions.
.eclipse	Hidden directory with Eclipse files including all older versions.
.sunstudio	Hidden directory with Sun Studio files including user information.

In these directories, the actual file will appear above the name of the directory containing the file.

You can remove these special directories, and the next time you run the corresponding application, you will be treated as a new user. The directories will be rebuilt to the default settings, and you will lose any customization you may have done.

For example, to remove the browser preferences including bookmarks, history lists and cache, type the recursive remove command:

\rm -r .mozilla

Special files

There are special files which are good candidates for removal.

*.ps	postscript files used for printing
*.pdf	Documentation file in Adobe PDF format, which is a common download format
a.out	Executable file generated by a command-line compile command
core	debugging file generated after a program crashes

You can use the find command to find these special files anywhere in your directory structure.

vivaldi.udel.edu% find . -name '*.ps'
./Documents/out.ps
./Documents/plot.ps
./Documents/fig.ps
vivaldi.udel.edu% find . -name '*.pdf'
./SunRay_atHome033105.pdf
./Documents/print.pdf
vivaldi.udel.edu% find . -name 'a.out'
vivaldi.udel.edu% find . -name 'core'

In this case, three postscript files and one PDF file were found in the Documents directory. The Documents directory contains the files in the Documents folder on your Desktop. You can remove them using the standard Unix rm command, or you can remove them from the Java Desktop by moving them to your trash. Remember, you must delete them from trash to reduce your disk usage. See Nautilus Trash.

Request an increase in quota limits

Request an increase in your quota limit after you have investigated the likely cause of your disk quota problem. For a move help see How to Manage Your Disk Quota.