Re: Elastic Quota File System (EQFS)

["Fao, Sean" <sean.fao@capitalgenomix.com>]

Stephen Wille Padnos wrote:

> Fao, Sean wrote:
>
>> Amit Gud wrote:
>>
>>> Fao, Sean wrote:
>>>
>>>> Amit Gud wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> It cannot be denied that there _are_ applications for such a 
>>>>> system that we already discussed and theres a class of users who 
>>>>> will find the system useful.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I personally see no use whatsoever. Why not just allocate 100% of 
>>>> the file system to everybody and ignore quota's, entirely?  Each 
>>>> user will use whatever he/she requires and when space starts to run 
>>>> out, users will manually clean up what they don't need.
>>>
>>>
>>> We should get our basics right first. We _do_ need quotas!! Without 
>>> any quota system how are we going to avoid a malicious user  from 
>>> taking away all the space to keep other people starving? In EQFS 
>>> also this can happen, but we are giving *controlled flexibility* to 
>>> the user. He is having some stretching power but not beyond a 
>>> certain limit. And do you think users are sincere enough to clean up 
>>> there files when they are done?
>>
>>
>> And I suppose you think that users will be sincere enough to mark 
>> files as elastic?  I, for one, already said that I absolutely would 
>> *not* mark a single file as elastic.  If I'm using 110 MB and you 
>> need an additional 10 MB for storage, you won't be getting it from me 
>> because I don't want to come in some morning to find that a file has 
>> disappeared.
>>
>> The system that you're asking for is a system without quotas.  Think 
>> about what you're saying.
>
>
> I think you missed one of the main points - you don't get any extra 
> space until you mark some of your files as elastic.
> You're right - under this system, nobody would get any space from 
> deletion of your files because you would use the system as a normal 
> hard quota system - you would mark no files as elastic, and would 
> therefore be limited to your quota (in the example you gave, you would 
> not be using 110M, because your quota would have limited you to 
> 100M).  If you were so kind as to mark something as elastic (say, that 
> recently doneloaded install tarball of the Gimp), then you would 
> remove the storage taken by those files from your quota usage and 
> would have more space available, with the risk that the elastic files 
> might not stick around.


You're right; I did missunderstand one of the main points.  I was under 
the impression that I could take whatever I needed, as long as it were 
available.  This does change my view on the subject, somewhat.

Thanks for clearing that up,

Sean