Is there a way to limit disk space usage for the Surfer app?

[d19dotca]

I was wondering if I could set a hard-limit for a Surfer app install, so that my client wanting an easy-to-use file server for example couldn't consume more than the agreed-upon amount (i.e. 30 GB for example).

I'm unaware of how to achieve this currently, I presume it doesn't exist as a feature but would love to know if I've just missed this or if we can file this as a feature request instead if it's not available yet.

[robi]

traditionally that is managed with the quota system, or one can do so with mounts and partitions.

[girish]

I think https://forum.cloudron.io/topic/5103/storage-limits-per-app is the feature request at the platform level but we don't have the feature yet.

[nebulon]

The idea to use volumes (for example with loopback mounted filesystems, set to the wanted disk size) will only work once surfer supports changing the root folder it serves up. Where we recently found use-cases anyways, so I might add this.

This will still not be a great disk quota feature, but could be a start.

[robi]

@nebulon right, this also opens up mountable encrypted filesystems within a file.

[d19dotca]

So I’m newer to running a dedicated server (always used Public Cloud VPS instances), but I don’t think I can easily add an external disk to a dedicated server, so the idea of volumes may not work well in my case. But either way I guess it sounds like Surfer doesn’t yet support volumes either.

Ideally we’d have the ability to set quotas system wide or app level wide but I realize that’s a whole different feature request.

[timconsidine]

@d19dotca if you can't get the solution you want (limits), you could set up a monitor using ntfy with a cron job and a script checking du <directory> results so at least you know if they are approaching or over the agreed usage.

Appreciate it's not your preferred solution, but as an interim ?

[d19dotca]

@timconsidine That's a good idea! I still have yet to play with the ntfy app, will test that out. Thanks Tim!

[jdaviescoates]

@d19dotca said in Is there a way to limit disk space usage for the Surfer app?:

I don’t think I can easily add an external disk to a dedicated server,

How is it any different than doing it on a VPS?

Surely mount points in fstab work the same either way, no?

[d19dotca]

@jdaviescoates said in Is there a way to limit disk space usage for the Surfer app?:

How is it any different than doing it on a VPS?

Surely mount points in fstab work the same either way, no?

I assume the process is the same if I was able to add new disks to it, but to my knowledge, OVH at least (maybe others do?) doesn't allow new disks being added to a dedicated server I presume since it involves physical hardware additions. Unlike VPS's where disks are essentially partitions of a giant NAS array, dedicated servers at OVH are literally that, so they are a box on a rack that I have full unfettered access to with amazing performance however the downside is lack of modifications hardware-wise. If I were using their Public Cloud I would be able to add additional disks without issue though. Would hate to go back to that though as I get so much more bang-for-the-buck with the OVH dedicated server.

I'm newer to using a dedicated server though so perhaps I'm mistaken too. I can contact OVH Support to double-check that I suppose.

[msbt]

@d19dotca you could create virtual disks with the wanted size, add them as volumes and use them as storage. Not sure what that does to performance, but you could try and let us know

[jdaviescoates]

@d19dotca I'm pretty sure you could still eg follow instructions like these https://docs.hetzner.com/robot/storage-box/access/access-samba-cifs to mount (in this case) a Hetzner Storage box to a dedicated server.

The fact it's a physical machine wouldn't make any difference, I think. It's just a matter of telling your machine where the remote drive is and giving it the credentials to access it.