quota(5) quota(5)
NAME [Toc] [Back]
quota - disk quotas
DESCRIPTION [Toc] [Back]
Disk quotas can be used by the system administrator to limit the
number of files and file blocks owned by a user on a per-file-system
basis. Separate limits can be established for both the number of
files (inodes) and the number of 1-Kbyte blocks for each user. A soft
(preferred) and a hard limit are established.
For example, user joe_doe may have soft limits of 1000 blocks and 200
files and hard limits of 1200 blocks and 300 files on the root file
system (/) containing his/her HOME directory and /tmp, and soft and
hard block limits of 100 and 120, respectively, with no explicit file
limit (0), on the mounted file system /mnt.
A time limit is established for each file system which determines how
long a user is allowed to exceed the soft limit. The default time
limit is one week (7 days).
When a user exceeds his/her soft limit, a warning is emitted on the
user's terminal. The user can continue to increase utilization over
the soft limit until he/she either exceeds the hard limit or the
established time limit. Once either of these events occurs, a message
is sent to the user's terminal and further attempts at file creation
and/or increased block utilization will fail. At this point, the user
must reduce his/her use of the exceeded limit below the soft limit to
restore normal operation.
At login time, users exceeding quota limits are reminded (via
login(1)) of exceeded quotas and appropriate remedial action. The
user can check current quota status at any time with the quota command
(see quota(1)).
Quota limits and utilization statistics are maintained by the
operating system for each file system for which quotas have been
enabled (see mount(1M) and quotaon(1M)).
Disk quotas are established independently for each user and each file
system via the edquota command (see edquota(1M)). This command is
also used to establish the limit for the amount of time users are
permitted to exceed their soft limit. The default time limit is 1
week.
Limits and usage statistics are stored statically in the file quotas
on the root of each file system for which they are in effect. This
file is synchronized with information in the kernel by the quotactl()
system call (see quotactl(2)) and whenever an affected file system is
unmounted.
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Quotas can be enabled automatically at boot or mount time by adding
the quotas option to the option list in /etc/fstab (see fstab(4) and
mount(1M)). By default, mount does not enable disk quotas.
Quotas can subsequently be disabled and re-enabled with the quotaoff
and quotaon commands (see quotaon(1M)). When quotas are disabled, the
kernel does not maintain usage statistics and the quotas file usage
statistics are invalidated by file system activity. Disabling quotas
improves performance, but necessitates running the quotacheck command
(see quotacheck(1M)) to update the kernel and quotas file after
subsequently re-enabling quotas.
The repquota command (see repquota(1M)) displays reports of current
quota statistics. The somewhat related, but independent, quot command
(see quot(1M)), collects and reports disk utilization independently of
the disk quota subsystem.
The mount command (see mount(1M)) reports any file systems for which
quotas are enabled.
Data Storage Structure [Toc] [Back]
The dqblk data structure (defined in <quota.h>), is used by the
quotactl() system call (see quotactl(2)) to get or set quota
information. This structure contains fields that are used to store a
user's current file and block count and quota limits for a particular
file system.
struct dqblk contains the following members:
uint32_t dqb_bhardlimit; /* maximum # of disk blocks +1 */
uint32_t dqb_bsoftlimit; /* preferred limit on disk blocks */
uint32_t dqb_curblocks; /* current block count */
uint32_t dqb_fhardlimit; /* maximum # allocated files +1 */
uint32_t dqb_fsoftlimit; /* preferred file limit */
uint32_t dqb_curfiles; /* current # allocated files */
uint32_t dqb_btimelimit; /* time limit for excessive block use */
uint32_t dqb_ftimelimit; /* time limit for excessive files */
The dqblk64 data structure (defined in <quota.h>), is used by the
quotactl() system call (see quotactl(2)) to get or set quota
information for 64-bit filesystems. This structure contains fields
that are used to store a user's current file and block count and quota
limits for a particular file system. Note that VxFS 3.5 will track
usage in the dqb64_curblocks field only up to 2 TB.
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struct dqblk64 contains the following members:
uint64_t dqb64_bhardlimit; /* maximum # of disk blocks +1 */
uint64_t dqb64_bsoftlimit; /* preferred limit on disk blocks */
uint64_t dqb64_curblocks; /* current block count */
uint64_t dqb64_fhardlimit; /* maximum # allocated files +1 */
uint64_t dqb64_fsoftlimit; /* preferred file limit */
uint64_t dqb64_curfiles; /* current # allocated files */
uint64_t dqb64_btimelimit; /* time limit for excessive block use */
uint64_t dqb64_ftimelimit; /* time limit for excessive files */
NETWORKING FEATURES [Toc] [Back]
Quotas are not fully supported over NFS file systems. However, the
quota command is able to report quota statistics on remote NFS file
systems for which disk quotas are in effect, if the remote system
provides the RPC rquotad service (see rquotad(1M)).
rquotad is provided to allow reciprocal support to other systems.
EXAMPLES [Toc] [Back]
Initial Setup
The kernel must be reconfigured to support disk quotas; see the System
Administration manuals. Eligible file systems for disk quota
enforcement are those with mount options rw and quota, as described in
mount(1M) and fstab(4).
For each file system for which quotas are to be enabled, perform the
following tasks:
1. Mount the file system.
2. Add quota to the existing options list in /etc/fstab. For
example, change the string default for the root (/) entry to
default,quota. Once this is done, quotas will automatically
be enabled for all relevant file systems on system reboot.
3. Create the quotas file in the mount directory of the file
system. For example, for the /mnt file system, run the
command
cpset /dev/null /mnt/quotas 600 root bin
4. Establish one or more prototype user quotas using the
edquota command (see edquota(1M)).
If you want a number of users on your system to have the
same limits, use edquota to set those quotas for a prototype
user; then use the edquota -p command to replicate those
limits for that group of users.
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5. Turn on the quotas on the file system using quotaon. For
example, run the command
/usr/sbin/quotaon /mnt
6. Run quotacheck (see quotacheck(1M)) on the file system to
record the current usage statistics.
Adding a new user [Toc] [Back]
To add a new user to the quota system:
1. Use edquota to copy the quotas of an existing user.
2. Run quotacheck.
Adding a new file system to an established system [Toc] [Back]
Repeat steps 1 through 5 above under "Initial Setup" for the new file
system.
WARNINGS [Toc] [Back]
The HP-UX default is to allow chown(2). This can interfere with the
disk quota mechanism. Quotas can be defeated if the chown command
(see chown(1)) or the chown() system call (see chown(2)) is accessible
to a user. The setprivgrp command (see setprivgrp(1M)) can be used to
limit access to the chown() system call so that only a specified group
of users are permitted to use the chown command or the chown() system
call.
The sam command (see sam(1M)) does not yet support disk quotas. When
adding new users or file systems, any desired quotas must be
established outside of sam.
HP has added features to the original implementation to ensure
correctness of the content of the quotas file when quotas are enabled
by mount and disabled by umount (see mount(1M)), thus eliminating the
need to run quotacheck (see quotacheck(1M)). These features are
ineffective, however, if quotaoff and quotaon (see quotaon(1M)) are
used to control quotas.
quotacheck should only be run on a dormant file system to ensure
accurate usage information. The -qv options of the fsclean command
(see fsclean(1M)) report on the the current viability of the quota
information.
AUTHOR [Toc] [Back]
Disk Quotas were developed by the University of California, Berkeley,
Sun Microsystems, and HP.
FILES [Toc] [Back]
/etc/fstab Static information about the file systems
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/etc/mnttab Mounted file system table
directory/quotas Quota statistics static storage for a file
system, where directory is the root of the file
system, as specified to the mount command (see
mount(1M)).
SEE ALSO [Toc] [Back]
chown(1), chown(2), quota(1), edquota(1M), fstab(4), mount(1M),
quot(1M), quotacheck(1M), quotaon(1M), rquotad(1M), setprivgrp(1M),
quotactl(2), vfsmount(2).
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