limit the user home directory size

[RZachLamberty]

this is more a system issue than a gpu issue, but it feels like the best place to keep track of it.

[RZachLamberty]

looks like the main method for doing this (quota) sets limits on filesystem size, and there is no common alternative for setting limits on a directory level. this means we would need to create a /home partition (something I could have sworn ubuntu did by default, but is not the case on our box), or a virtual partition as described here.

alternatively we could monitor the directory sizes with a simple cron job.

the former option has the benefit that software upgrades are less scary and we can more easily tar up user's stuff if needed. the latter has the benefit that it's lazy af and doesn't require any admin work / possibility of borking things

[RZachLamberty]

also, this was the most pedantic tutorial I found

[semperstew]

The virtual partition tut seems pretty straightforward. My only question is what happens when a user reaches the hard limit? I didn't see any reference to automatic cleanup or directory compression options. It just seems like the user will eventually hit a wall and will be denied outright when trying to create new files. In turn, we'll get some email/slack message asking why it's happening and requesting us to fix it so they can save yet another Honey Boo Boo meme.
I think running a nightly cron job to produce a report of users disk usage would be a better option. Then we can just reach out to them individually if they're approaching whatever arbitrary limit we decide to impose.