The Problem

Exceeding your account's disk quota limit

The Solutions

How to check your account's overall disk space use

How to identify files & folders that use the most disk space

How to reduce disk space use if you work with web pages

How to Manage Your Disk Quota

The following instructions are written to help individuals who work with Nescape Messenger (version 4.7x) use the application to reduce the disk space used by their e-mail messages.

1. Refer to the names of the last 4 or 5 folders that you wrote down when you used the du -ak | sort -n command so you know which folders to focus on when you want to remove (delete) files.
2. Open Netscape Messenger as you normally do.
3. Under the File menu, if Empty Trash on mail.udel.edu is in black text, select it to empty your trash. (Note: Be sure you're emptying the Trash folder on mail.udel.edu and not on Local Mail.)
4. Check your Netscape configuration settings to verify that they are set to delete e-mail properly.
5. Make sure you can see the size of the messages in your Inbox. If you don't see the Size column along with the column names Subject, Sender, etc., follow the instructions to make the message size column visible.
6. Delete the messages you no longer need. Highlight the message and click Delete at the top of the screen. A red X will appear at the beginning of the Subject line. When you have marked all the messages you want to delete within that folder, from the File menu choose Compact This Folder to actually delete them.
7. Important: If you must keep large messages, create Local Mail folders in which to save the messages. Local Mail folders are stored on your desktop computer and, therefore, aren't counted toward your disk quota limit on the central UNIX servers. Follow these steps to create folders within your Local Mail folder:
1. Click Local Mail.
2. Click File | New Folder. You will see the New Folder dialog box. Type a name for the folder in the Name field.
3. Click OK.
4. To move large messages to a Local Mail folder, right click on the message you want to move. Select Move Message and then select the appropriate folder. The message will be moved and marked for deletion (a red X will appear at the beginning of its Subject line).
5. When all messages are moved and marked for deletion, compact each folder from which you deleted messages (File | Compact This Folder).
8. Minimize the e-mail program window.
9. Maximize the SSH window. After you remove (delete) files, recheck your overall disk space.
10. If your account is still over its disk quota limit, maximize the e-mail program window and remove (delete) more messages.
11. Switch back and forth between the e-mail program window and the SSH window to remove (delete) files until your account is below its disk quota limit.
12. Close any windows you no longer need.

     

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