Re: Sysadmins

[Jonathan S. Shapiro]

On Sat, 2005-11-05 at 11:49 +0100, Emmanuel Colbus wrote:
> In the main 
> areas, policy isn't that strong, and the total amount of disk
> space is far lower than the sum of all quotas...
> 
> Therefore, it's also the administrator's business to ensure users
> aren't wasting their space for nothing...

The first statement is true, and it follows necessarily from the
mathematics of resource management.

The second statement does not follow from the first. Here are two
alternatives:

  1. It is the system administrator's duty to monitor *usage* (as
     opposed to content) and determine whose usage needs to be
     curtailed. Any subsequent negotiation about whether the content
     is valuable can be undertaken between the humans without requiring
     architectural support for spying.

  2. Alternatively, it is the system administrator's duty to buy
     more disk.

The second point deserves more thought than we usually give it: in many
cases, the cost of a new disk drive is substantially less than the cost
of the employee-time to throw things away.

shap