Checking your Disk Space Usage

 

To check your disk usage, you must log into the server via Telnet. Our FAQ on using the Telnet communication protocol will walk you through the built-in windows 95 version. Other users will need to obtain a telnet client from their software vendor or from one of the free software sites listed on our Resources page.

Once you have logged into the server, you will be at the te.netmand prompt in your root directory. Typing the following:

    du -s

will yield a number like:

    6785       .

This figure is in kilobytes. If you divide it by 1024 you will have the megabytes it represents (6785/1024 = 6.625 megabytes).
This represents the space used by your webpages, graphics and other supporting files. If the number seems a little large to you, try typing this command:

    du -s * | more

and you will be presented with a list of your subdirectories and their sizes. This will help you track down the largest areas of your site. You will need to run these commands in any other directories on the server that you have.

Note 1: If you do not know your IP address, you may find it by typing this command at the Telnet prompt:

nslookup yourdomainprefix

For example, if your domain name is bob.com, you would type:

nslookup bob

Now check how much space your mail boxes are using. Change directories by typing:

    cd /var/mail/

Then type:

    ls -ald yourUserID*

For example, if your userid is bob, type:   

     ls -ald bob*

The result will look something like the ones below. The figures are in bytes (the * after the userid lets you list all of your userid's at once).

	 -rw------- 1 bob  bbsuser     1254 Mar 7 10:58 bob
	 -rw------- 1 bob2 ftponly        0 Mar 6 07:54 bob2
	 -rw------- 1 bob3 ftponly        0 Mar 7 10:58 bob3
	 -rw------- 1 bob4 ftponly 25654321 Mar 6 07:54 bob4
	 -rw------- 1 bob5 ftponly    14495 Mar 7 10:15 bob5

In this example, we see that bob and bob5 have a reasonable amount of mail awaiting them and bob2 and bob3 have checked their mail recently and their mail client removed the mail from the server when they were done. It would appear that bob4 has not been retrieving his mail or that his mail program is set to leave mail on the server after retreival. His mailbox now contains about 24 megabytes. Added to the 6.625 from the example at the top of this faq, this site's usage is over 30 megabytes and will incur additional charges. Mail boxes that contain more than 10 megabytes are considered unretreivable and are periodically emptied automaticcally by the system. Be sure to keep your mailbox sizes down to minimum to ensure that important mail is not deleted.

Those who exceed their allotted amount of space will be charged for the extra space.