On Thu, May 30, 2019 at 9:58 AM David <david@kdbarto.org> wrote:

I think it was BSD 4.1 that added quotas to the disk system, and I was just wondering if anyone ever used them, in academia or industry. As a user and an admin I never used this and, while I thought it was interesting, just figured that the users would sort it out amongst themselves. Which they mostly did.

So, anyone ever use this feature?

Oh yes. I used them in multiple places; in fact, on a public access Unix system that I still (!!) am active on (well, not really...grex.org) we use them; mostly to try and limit the effects of abuse.

Quotas were very useful in time shared and network environments, where you didn't quite trust all of the users. For example, university networks where undergrads were given accounts for course work, but could be otherwise mischievous, and you didn't want them interfering with research happening on the same system/network.

- Dan C.