Home folder (/home/username)
============================

About
-----

Your user's home folder is located at ``/home/username``, where ``username`` is your Discoverer HPC username (the user account name). You can save your user's personal information and important settings in ``/home/username``, but don't put big files there. Read more about that restriction below.

.. important:: It is noteworthy that the folder ``/home/username`` is not a distinct mounting point for it is based on the ``/home`` file system (``/home/`` is a mounting point). The ``/home`` is `Ext4`_ file system (rw,usrquota,relatime,seclabel,stripe=64), remotely hosted on the management servers, is mounted on the login node and all compute nodes using `NFSv4`_ over 20 Gbps Ethernet (2 x 10 Gbps `Ethernet bonding`_, MTU 1500, ``mlx5_core`` driver). Since the total capacity of ``/home`` is low (only 15.6 TB), the per-user quota set on ``/home`` provides minimal per-user storage capacity (≤ 2 GB). On the other side, the NFSv4 file system carrier protocol is not suitable for intensive syncing of live data and editing large files because it cannot handle intensive I/O loads.

.. warning:: Always use either :doc:`scratchfolder` or :doc:`projectfolder`, based on the circumstances, for creating, manipulating, and storing big files.

Size/Quota
----------

.. note:: 2 GB of personal disk space (quota) on /home file system and up to 100000 files and folders.

Each active user, regardless of the number of projects he or she contributes to, receives **2 GB of personal disk space (quota) on the /home file system.** The utilization of the personal user disk space on ``/home`` is estimated as the sum of the size of all files on that file system that belong to the POSIX user ID of the user. The total number of files and folders the user can own on ``/home`` is limited to 100000.

To check the current user disc space utilization on ``/home``, execute the following command line on the login node (replace ``username`` with your actual username):

.. code-block:: bash

 quota -u username

How to decipher the numbers displayed in the output:

.. code-block:: bash

 Disk quotas for user username (uid 2001): 
 Filesystem  blocks   quota   limit   grace   files   quota   limit   grace
 /home            4 2097152 3145728               2  100000  150000  

All numbers describing the space used are multiple of 1KB.

More information about the numbers is given in :doc:`calculating_the_disk_usage_basics`

Data retention policy
---------------------

The files stored in ``/home/username`` are retained for 45 days after the user has been deactivated. Afterwards, they may undergo a secure wipe out.


Help
----

If you experience issues with accessing your home folder and the content stored there, contact the Discoverer HPC support team (see :doc:`help`).

.. _`Ext4`: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ext4
.. _`NFSv4`: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_File_System
.. _`Ethernet bonding`: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/8/html/configuring_and_managing_networking/configuring-network-bonding_configuring-and-managing-networking