UNH IT: Out of (CIS Unix) Disk Space?

Although most CIS Unix users have a relatively spacious disk quota of 256 Megabytes, it's easy (under some conditions) to use it up. Two common reasons:

If you are a WebMail user, the only semi-automatic deletion of mail is the optional monthly purging of older messages from your 'spam' and 'trash' folders, and deletion of older sent-mail folders. Depending on how your options are set, even this relatively innocuous cleanup can be avoided. Mail in your other folders, especially your Inbox, can continue to build up. This can also happen if you leave your account unattended for a long period of time.
If you use the Student Computing Clusters, programs on those machines can automatically use your Unix home directory to store files which can take up a large amount of space.

When you run out of free disk space:

Mail delivery to your account fails, because there's no room to store incoming mail.
The server software (both POP3 and IMAP protocols) that ordinarily provides you access to your mail may fail to work well, or at all. (Note that WebMail uses IMAP, so this means that WebMail may fail to display your mail properly, or at all.)
Hence an attempt to save space by deleting messages in WebMail may not work well: you may not be able to see your messages, and if you can, you may not be able to delete them.
You'll also find it difficult to use other applications. For example, you may not be able to save documents as you might expect in the Student Computing Clusters.

What to do?

Step One: Find out where your disk space is being used

That should almost go without saying, right? How will you know where to concentrate your cleanup efforts if you don't know where the mess is?

Most people will want to use the "CIS Disk Usage Report" web application at https://webmail.unh.edu/cgi-bin/bloatfinder.cgi. This application will request your CIS Unix username and password; after you enter them successfully, you'll be presented with (hopefully) useful information:

your current disk quota and usage;
the names and sizes of any mail folders over 1 Megabyte in size;
the names and sizes of any files in the top level of your home directory over 1 Megabyte in size;
the names of sizes of any non-mail directories at the top level of your home directory that contain files (and, possibly, other directories) totaling over 1 Megabyte.

Step Two: Delete Stuff

To reclaim space in your account, you'll need to delete things. You need to decide what's important to keep and what's not; we can't make that decision for you. Here are some guidelines and possible methods for cleanup:

Special note: as mentioned above, if you're totally out of free disk space in your account, you may not be able to see the contents of your mail folders in WebMail. If that's the case, a brute-force method may be best: try using the File Manager in WebMail (described below) to remove some large files (either mail folders or non-mail files). Once you open up some free space in your account that way, WebMail will start working again, and you can use conventional methods to clean up more selectively, if desired.
Cleaning up mail folders. If you can see the contents of your mail folders in WebMail, opening up some more space can be (relatively) easy.
- For most WebMail users, "deleting" messages from mail folders simply moves those messages to the Trash folder. That's fine, but it reclaims no space in your account. If you're sure you don't want the messages in your Trash folder, click the 'Empty Trash' icon.
- It's possible for WebMail to "mark messages as deleted" when you delete them, instead of moving them to the trash folder. If that applies to you, you'll see a 'Purge Deleted' link on your folder display page. Again: simply deleting messages doesn't save any space. To reclaim space in your account, you need to click the 'Purge Deleted' link.
- You may have a Spam folder (typically named 'IN.spam'). Almost certainly it doesn't contain anything useful. Check it out anyway, and click the 'Empty Spam' icon. (And then "Empty Trash" or "Purge Deleted" as described above.)
- If you would simply like to remove all messages from a mail folder, select it from the left-hand menu to display its contents. You should see a mysterious unlabeled icon at the top of the message list:
  
  Click it; you'll be asked if you're sure you want to delete all mail in the folder. If you're sure, click yes.
- In many cases, a mail folder's size is dominated by a relative handful of large messages. But they may be difficult to find if there are a lot of messages in the folder. You can sort your message display so that the largest messages are "on top" by clicking on the "Size" column header:
  
  Click again, if necessary, to get the arrow next to the column to point down (a "descending" sort by size).
  
  Once you're done deleting, you may want to redo the folder's previous sorting order; typically, this is on the '#' column, descending.
- To delete selected messages from a folder, simply check the box to their left in the list display.
  
  And then click the "Delete" link just above the list.
Don't Forget the Student Computing Clusters: A good deal of your disk space may be consumed by files that you saved when using the Student Computing Clusters (SCC). Examine the "CIS Disk Usage Report" (described above) for large directories with names like Desktop, Documents, Library, etc.; these were almost certainly generated in the SCC.

So It may be easiest to examine and remove files in these directories the same way they got there: by logging into an SCC computer. Details are beyond the scope of this document, but usually an SCC consultant will be available to help you if necessary.
Using the File Manager. You can use the File Manager in WebMail to delete any file in your home directory, both mail folders and non-mail folders. It's very much a brute force method, but (like many brute force methods) it can be very effective. Some guidelines:
- The File Manager is hidden under "My Account" on the leftside menu; click the plus-sign-in-a-box to show it:
  
  Then click on the "File Manager" link:
- The File Manager will show you a list of the files and subdirectories in your CIS Unix home directory. There might be a lot! Unless your situation is unusual, your 'Inbox' will be in the .mailspool subdirectory; your other mail folders will be in the mail subdirectory.
  
  You can display the contents of subdirectories by clicking on their names. Note that those subdirectories can contain subdirectories, and those can contain subdirectories themselves. If you get lost exploring your directory hierarchy, you can return to your home directory by clicking the "My Home" icon:
- Pay attention to the 'Size' column in the File Manager display, and concentrate your efforts on the big files. To make finding the big files easier, you can (a) click on the 'Size' column, and (b) then click on the triangle next to it (if necessary) to get it to point downward. This will put the largest files at the top of the display.
- When you find one or more files you would like to delete:
  1. Click the checkboxes on their left:
  2. Then choose 'Delete' from the 'Actions' pulldown menu above;
  3. You'll be asked to confirm this drastic step:
    
    … but if you are sure, go ahead and click 'OK'. You should see a confirming message in the browser window, and there should be some more free space in your account.

Conclusion

If you've opened up some free space in your directory, things should start working better for you again. Recent mail that may have been deferred from delivery will be automatically resent within a few hours. If your mail was suspended due to persistent delivery failures, it will be desuspended soon.

Although we've concentrated on WebMail-based tools in this document, you can also clean up your disk space in a (so-called) login session using Unix shell commands. Information on doing that is here.

Page Maintenance:

Paul A. Sand <pas@unh.edu>

Last modified: 2012-05-07 8:57 AM EDT
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