Limit the amount of data that can be stored in a folder on Ubuntu Server 12.04?

Question

I'm in the process of building my first server. It's up, it's running, I'm transferring copious amounts of data away from my horrid little Drobo (DO NOT BUY ONE OF THESE, EVER).

However, there's one thing I have yet to do: I'd like to set it up for Time Machine backups as well. I've seen all the guides and I have some idea of how to set the whole thing up, but the issue is that Time Machine will just fill up as much space as you let it. So if I let it lose in my 8 TB zpool it'll slowly consume every last available sector.

This, of course, is not acceptable.

I have a folder at the root of my zpool called "ZFS Time Machine" and I would like to limit it to 1 TB (all I need for backup purposes). However, I have no idea how to do that.

Is this possible? I can continue using a small external hard drive attached via FW800 if I have to but I'd much rather prefer putting everything on my server.

Answer 1

Looks like this isn't currently possible. The solution I've settled on is to simply delete older archives as I need. Time Machine is pretty OK with this, oddly enough. It's a temporary solution, sure, but I eventually plan on replacing Time Machine with something a bit more configurable so we'll see.