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- Path: sparky!uunet!olivea!spool.mu.edu!sdd.hp.com!hplabs!ucbvax!SWTEXAS.BITNET!SP02038
- From: SP02038@SWTEXAS.BITNET
- Newsgroups: comp.sys.apollo
- Subject: SR10.4 Disk Quotas Are Total TRASH
- Message-ID: <9209151908.AA25075@srvr2.engin.umich.edu>
- Date: 15 Sep 92 19:08:00 GMT
- Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
- Organization: The Internet
- Lines: 93
-
-
- Paul Szabo writes "Disk quotas at 10.4: problems":
-
- > I now have a few nodes at SR10.4, so I wanted to try out the fancy new disk
- > quota system. I found the following problems with it. In my opinion these
- > problems (by themselves or in combination) make the quota system unusable.
-
- You too? Gee, and I thought I was the only one :)
-
- > 1) There is a limit of 1024 users in the disk quota table. (This limitation
- > is shown by INVOL.) We have well over that many users: some would have to
- > miss out. (It seems that a user without a disk quota entry is equivalent
- > to having a limit of zero.)
-
- Our site only has a few hundred users, so the limit is not a problem. The docs
- do mention that everyone who needs to write to the volume, must have an entry
- in the quota table for the volume.
-
- > 2) There is no tool to re-build the 'currently-used' table. It seems to me
- > that the currently-used values only change when files are created/changed
- > (only for users with disk quota entries, and only while quotaon is in
- > effect). Creating a quota entry for a user will always see his
- > currently-used value start at zero.
-
- Actually there is, but not a very convenient one. Salvol will refresh the
- quota table. Our volumes are in use nearly 24hrs a day, so taking a volume
- off-line to refresh the quota table is an inconvenience to the users and
- creates a hassle for the administrators. There needs to be a way to refresh
- the quota table without taking the volume off-line (which in the case of our
- disked nodes means taking the node down!)
-
- > 3) There is no command to view one's own disk quota limit and usage. The
- > command 'edquota -l' displays the full table; this has implications about
- > the privacy of other users, besides the inconvenience of having to use
- > 'grep' on the output.
-
- Whoever designed the apollo's quota system sure wasn't thinking about the users.
- Our users do a lot of their work on our VAX systems; hence, they are in the
- habit of checking their quota a couple of times a day. Additionally, the
- faculty are not too happy about everyone having the ability to know how much
- space they are taking up. Surely there must be a quick fix to this one.
-
- > 4) There may be no error messages when exceeding quota. In particular, the
- > command 'echo abc > file' would return no error message even though I was
- > over my quota (it created an empty file instead: this does not need any
- > quota). Similarly the command 'echo abc >> file' would silently fail to
- > extend the file. (The commands were run in the /bsd4.3/bin/csh, on a node
- > running 10.4; the file was on another node running 10.4 and disk quotas.)
-
- Now this chaps my hide! This renders the quota system utterly useless!!!!!
- Whoever in HP assumed the quota system was FUNCTIONAL must have been living
- on the planet Mars for the last decade. This utterly infuriates me! One
- of the major reasons for us to upgrade to SR10.4 was because of the problems
- we were experiencing due to NOT having disk quotas. Now we have disk quotas,
- but they create more problems than we originally had.
-
- However, I have experimented with the trying to exceed the quota, and have found
- that most of the time (NOT ALL) an error message is displayed. However, I have
- a problem with the way the quota violation is handled. If a new file is being
- created when the quota is exceeded, then the file SHOULD fail to be created. If
- the new file would replace an existing file, then the existing file SHOULD be
- restored -- since this is probably difficult to implement the existing file
- SHOULD at least be deleted. If the user was appending to a file when the quota
- violation occurred, then the previous end of file should be restored -- this
- should be pretty easy to implement. In all cases a quota violation error should
- be displayed.
-
- > 5) Files can be 'given away', after which they are counted against the new
- > owner's quota. This defeats the purpose of the system and allows
- > denial-of-service attacks.
-
- Not sure what he means here.
-
- > Does anyone know a way around these problems? (Would HP fix them if I
- > submitted an APR?) I hope they can be fixed, I was really looking forward to
- > using disk quotas.
-
- This is a MAJOR BUG!!! I feel ripped off by HP. I was considering the idea of
- purchasing some PA-RISC systems, but HP has treated the Domain/OS customers so
- poorly that we'll probably go with DEC.
-
- On a similar note... The PRMGR at SR10.4 is TRASH too. I have tried everything
- conceivable to get it working, but it still cannot find the global location
- broker. The glbd is running, and everything is able to access it without
- difficulty EXCEPT the prmgr. Someone posted something earlier about it, and the
- reply was to use the SR10.3 prmgr. Well, we upgraded from a much earlier SR and
- don't happen to have the SR10.3 prmgr. I would be eternally grateful to anyone
- willing to mail me the SR10.3 prmgr as a uuencoded file :)
-
- Shaun Pankau e-mail: sp02038@swtexas.bitnet
- UNIX Systems Administrator sp02038%swt.decnet@relay.the.net
- Computer Science Department
- Southwest Texas State University
-