daddy-Q

A revolution in the world of deletion

Never have so many users feared a new program. daddyQ will make life difficult for everyone previously running about on universities servers filling up disks with illegally copied movies, music and games. With daddyQ the real disk-bastards get spanked, and kind users get easier living.

Dyre Meen, Stian Søiland, Magnus Nordseth
NTNU ITEA Systemdrift
Trondheim, Norway 2002-2003

In development

daddyQ is currently in development at the Norwegian university NTNU. We have not released any downloadable files yet. The project development is currently on hold as the developers are engaged on other projects, but progress will restart during the summer 2003.

However, you may follow the development version and plans at the Sourceforge project page. You may reach the developers by sending a message to daddyq-devel (at) lists.sourceforge.net

What is daddyQ?

daddyQ is a system for monitoring and logging disk usage, and perform actions against overusage. The file system has no enforced quotas, but every user is given a general or specific quota.

Each night, the system checks total disk usage, and remembers each time a user is above his given quota. Normally nothing is done except registerring the overuse.

A user frequently above the quota will be recognized, and some of his files are selected for deletion in an intelligent way. The user is sent a warning notice some days in advance, but the warning period will be shorter if he is a known disk abuser, for instance if he's over his quota with a large amount.

Users with a over-quota-history is 'watched uppon', that is, they have a much higher risk for getting files into the deletion-warning-state, while normal users will only be subject to this after 10 days over the quota over the last 30 days.

daddyQ is written in Python and mainly developed for UNIX file servers on universities. It should be possible to use daddbQ for ISPs as well, but probably not for businesses as it enforces disk quota by deletion.