Computer Budget for HKUCC and HKUSUA

For the purposes of accounting and efficient use of the University's central computing resources, the Computer Centre has instituted a budget accounting scheme for the computer user accounts.  The budget of a user account is updated according to the scheme given in Section 6.15 of Centre's "Computer Services Handbook".  At the beginning of each academic year, the budgets of all computer accounts are reset.  This year, the budget  resetting was done on September 15, 2000.

For staff and post-graduate students, the  budgets of their user accounts on the HKUSUA and HKUCC systems were reset to $5,000.  For undergraduate and other users of these two systems, their account budgets were reset to $2,000.

A user can enquire the updated budget balance of his/her computer account by entering the command "budget" after logging in the corresonding computer system.

When the budget of a user account is used up, the user will not be able to login the system to process any computer jobs any more. Under such circumstances, the user must apply for additional budget for his computer account. Additional account budget application can be made by completing the application  form: "Application for Additional Computing Resources" which is accessible from the "On-line Enquiries => Application Forms" webpage under Computer Centre's homepage (URL -  http://www.itservices.hku.hk).
 

PPP Dial-up Service Budget

The budgets for the PPP Dial-up Service accounts for HKU staff and students were reset to $1,800 with effect from September 1, 2000.

PPP Dial-up users can enquire the updated balance of their  PPP account budgets through the ""On-line Enquiries => Other Enquiries" webpage under Computer Centre's homepage (URL -  http://www.itservices.hku.hk).
 

Laser-Printing Quota

The laser-printing quota for each HKUSUA account  is initialised with a free allocation of 50 printing units at account creation time.  This quota will not be reset annually and users are required to purchase any additional printing quota through the self-service PC's  in the student laboratories in room 104, Run Run Shaw Building, or in room 134, Old Library Building.
 

Disk  Storage Quota

The disk storage quota for a computer user account is divided into the "disk quota for user files" (generally called "disk quota") and "disk quota for storing e-mail messages" (generally called "mail quota"). These quotas will not be reset to their initially assigned values annually.

When a user's disk usage exceeds the account's "disk quota" , the user will not be able to create or save any new files. Likewise, when the "mail quota" of an account is exceeded, the user will not be able to receive any new email messages. Under such circumstances, the user must free up some disk storage space by deleting some of his files.  Procedures for deleting files and email messages from an account can be found from Centre's webpages for  FAQ for host computers and FAQ for Email, respectively. (URL for file deletion procedures:- http://www.itservices.hku.hk/faq/unix/index.htm#faq9; URL for email deletion procedures:-  http://www.itservices.hku.hk/faq/email.htm#quota2).

For more information about disk quota and email quota, please refer to a related article in Computer News No. 82.
 

Charles Cheung
Tel: 2859 2488
E-mail: cheungyw@hkucc.hku.hk