Quota Policy
BSCW - Basic Support for Cooperative Work - is a service provided by OrbiTeam Software GmbH & Co. KG, Bonn. Its use (on public.bscw.de) is free of charge and governed by the terms and conditions.
Why Quota?
In order to offer BSCW to all of our users as an environment for collaboration with colleagues and friends, we are forced to restrict the disk space per user.
According to the terms of use the following quota limitations apply on this BSCW server:
- a maximum of 1 GB disk space
- a maximum of 30000 objects
The quota sums size and number of all objects (e.g. documents) owned by a user.
How do I check my Quota?
The current state of your quota accounting is shown on the info page of your home folder:
When you login at
simply click on the button in context menu. The quota status looks like this:
Used Quota/Limit Time
Size 1.1G 1G/1.3G 2w
Objects 3056 30k/50k
Description: the user has a quota of 1 GB disk space and 30000 objects. This quota may be exceeded for a limited time (currently 2 weeks), but not beyond the hard limit of 1.3 GB disk space or the number of 50000 objects. The shown user currently has 1.1 GB disk space occupied, owns 3056 objects. Since the user exceeds the specified quota of 1 GB s/he has 14 days left to free the disk space above 1 GB.
My account is locked - what shall I do?
If a user does not reduce the resource usage below the quota within the 'time' limit, the user account gets locked. If a user account is locked, only Delete actions can be performed. The account is automatically unlocked once the user reduces the resource usage below the quota.
Kindly delete any documents that you do not need, and remember to clean up your wastebasket in BSCW. In the interest of your fellow users, please check carefully if you really need all the data on the server. We can only continue to operate the BSCW server with your cooperation. Keep in mind that BSCW is a tool for cooperation and not a backup server.
Can I have my quota extended?
If you need more disk space for your work, we encourage you to set up your own server at your organization. For the public BSCW service we will not make any exception to the quota restrictions; with many thousand registered users it is obviously impractical to respond to each user's individual needs.
We work hard to keep up this service for the scientific community, and we feel that despite the imposed restrictions this is still a valuable service.
Please recall our stated terms of use.