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disk quotas

(Written by Paul Cobbaut, https://github.com/paulcobbaut/, with contributions by: Alex M. Schapelle, https://github.com/zero-pytagoras/)

About Disk Quotas

To limit the disk space used by user, you can set up disk quotas. This requires adding usrquota and/or grpquota to one or more of the file systems in /etc/fstab.

root@linux:~# cat /etc/fstab | grep usrquota
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol02     /home     ext3     usrquota,grpquota   0 0

Next you need to remount the file system.

root@linux:~# mount -o remount /home

The next step is to build the quota.user and/or quota.group files. These files (called the quota files) contain the table of the disk usage on that file system. Use the quotacheck command to accomplish this.

root@linux:~# quotacheck -cug /home
root@linux:~# quotacheck -avug

The -c is for create, u for user quota, g for group, a for checking all quota enabled file systems in /etc/fstab and v for verbose information. The next step is to edit individual user quotas with edquota or set a general quota on the file system with edquota -t. The tool will enable you to put hard (this is the real limit) and soft (allows a grace period) limits on blocks and inodes. The quota command will verify that quota for a user is set. You can have a nice overview with repquota.

The final step (before your users start complaining about lack of disk space) is to enable quotas with quotaon(1).

root@linux:~# quotaon -vaug

Issue the quotaoff command to stop all complaints.

root@linux:~# quotaoff -vaug

Practice Disk quotas

  1. Implement disk quotas on one of your new partitions. Limit one of your users to 10 megabyte.

  2. Test that they work by copying many files to the quota'd partition.