On Sun, Aug 10, 2014 at 06:24:47PM +0200, Luuk wrote:
On 10-8-2014 06:18, Will Yardley wrote:
Depends on the environment; in many cases, the admin could, or may even be expected to, raise the quota.
!but should not!
Quota should be set according to some rules, and never be raised because of a 'quota reached'.
A few things on this:
- "Should" is a matter of opinion, and different environments have different business requirements. I've worked as a sysadmin for almost 15 years, in a variety of different settings (small startup, larger startup, later acquired by a corporation, academic), and I've found that there's always *some* squeaky wheel who is going to make a lot of noise and get their quota raised. In several roles, in fact, that person is often another technical person, who also happened to be my boss. In fact, I've been in plenty of situations where quotas can't be set at all, or are set so high that they're basically useless. I thought (at times) that changing to a different setting, for example, education, might change this, but I have not found this to be the case.
In a pure ISP / hosting provider type situation, it is often necessary to have a strict policy about quotas; however, on the corporate side of that same organization, there are often different business requirements.
So, if you enjoy the cozy situation of being able to tell your users what quota they can have, in all circumstances, more power to you, but I don't think this is typical in the "real world". And, in a sense, it needen't always be. If more disk space is what whoever the most important users in your organization "need" to get their work done in a way that's comfortable for them, it may well be the case that this is exactly what you'll need to provide for them -- especially if the organization is willing to fund the hardware necessary to support larger quotas for some, or all, users.
Again, even if the quota policy is strict, it's not always the case that users understand the error message they get, even if their MUA presents it in a friendly way.
In many cases, users aren't able to delete mail to get under their (hard) quota without having the quota raised temporarily. If their mail client deletes by copying messages into the trash, then purging, for example, I've seen cases where the only way for the user to trim down their usage is to temporarily increase the quota long enough for them to get their usage down.
Some environments (and some users) require a more "high touch" approach than others.
What is the use of 'quota' if the admin raises your quota when things are full?
One use is to prevent a mail loop or other problem affecting one or two users from filling up a storage volume. Another is so that usage requirements (and exceptions to default quotas) can be tracked.
Regardless of how individual organizations handles quotas, I don't see how having Dovecot log an over quota event would be a bad thing.
w