Why don't "quota -v", "du", "ls -l", and "ls -s" agree?

There are four situations in which different disk usage figures disagree:

1. A file may be "rm"ed, but if a process has that file open, then the space is not freed until the file has been closed. Look for processes that you may have left running; the process may be on any Eniac system, or any system that mounts Eniac's home directories.
2. du will count all files in your home directory, recursively, but quota will count all files owned by you anywhere in the file system. Look for files that you may have created or editted in someone else's home directory, or in a group directory.
3. Some files have "holes" in them, so that the usage listed by ls -s and quota is less than the file size listed by ls -l.
4. The quota database sometimes may get out of touch with reality. The database is maintained by incrementing or decrementing whenever blocks are allocated or freed. If there are bugs in the quota or file system implementation, errors can appear over time. This hasn't happened this century, but I mention it for completeness.

If there is a discrepancy between quota -v and du and you can not find the cause, please send mail to CETS and we'll investigate further.

Note: For information on logging into Eniac, please see "How Do I Log Into Eniac?"