Increased Quotas for Home Directories

Home directory quotas on Linux and Windows have been increased for all SSCC member accounts. Linux and Windows home directories now have a default 1 GB disk quota. If you need additional space, we will increase your home directory space to five gigabytes on request. If you still need additional space we will increase your home directory space to ten gigabytes with the approval of your advisor, supervisor or SSCC sponsor. You can request additional space by filling out a form on the web. If you already have additional disk space, your quota has been increased to the corresponding new level.

We made this change mostly because we were setting up more and more project directories for people who were running out of disk space in their home directories. This was annoying for these people and created unnecessary administrative overhead for SSCC staff. If you have a project directory only being used by you and it is under 10 GB, contact our help desk and we will be happy to move it into your home directory space for you.

Summer Training in Stata, SAS, SPSS, and Office 2007

The SSCC's summer training schedule is now underway. We have upcoming workshops in Stata, SPSS and SAS. We are also offering a new hands-on class on converting to Office 2007 for those who would like help in navigating the new Office interface. It will cover the basics of the interface and new features, as well as how to find the functions used in older versions. All of this summer's sessions take place in June. Visit our training page for details and to register.

Tip: Log Off of Winstat When You're Done Using It

There are two ways to close a Winstat window. One is to "disconnect" from it. This closes the window on your PC, but leaves your session running on the server for up to 24 hours. You can disconnect from a session by clicking Start, Shut Down and then Disconnect, but you also disconnect automatically if you just close a Winstat window by clicking on the 'X' in the upper right corner.

Disconnecting makes sense if you have started a long job and want to let it finish, or if you're going to be reconnecting to your session in the next hour or so. However, leaving disconnected sessions active for long periods can cause your Winstat profile to be corrupted, losing your settings and possibly files on your desktop or in My Documents. (This is why we always recommend you save everything on network drives like U: instead.) Disconnected sessions also take up resources on the server.

The other option is to log off, which closes the Winstat window on your PC and ends your session on the server. This avoids all the problems associated with disconnected sessions, and guarantees you'll get a fresh start when you log in next time. Note that if it takes you a long time to log in when you start a fresh session, it's because your profile has become large--see last month's SSCC News for details, or ask the consultant for help in reducing the size of your profile.

We strongly suggest that you log off of Winstat whenever you're done using it unless you're running a long job or will be coming back to it within the next hour.