Quota mini-HOWTO: Quota setup: tools

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## 4. Quota setup: tools

This operation is performed with the edquota command (`man edquota` for details).

## 4.1 Assigning quota for a particular user

Here's an example. I have a user with the login id bob on my system. The command "edquota -u bob" takes me into vi (or editor specified in my $EDITOR environment variable) to edit quota for user bob on each partition that has quota enabled:

    Quotas for user bob:
    /dev/hda3: blocks in use: 2594, limits (soft = 5000, hard = 6500)
             inodes in use: 356, limits (soft = 1000, hard = 1500)

"blocks in use" is the total number of blocks (in kilobytes) a user has consumed on a partition.

"inodes in use" is the total number of inodes a user has consumed on a partition.

## 4.2 Assigning quota for a particular group

Now I have a group games on my system. "edquota -g games" takes me into the vi editor again to edit quota for the group games:

            Quotas for group games:
            /dev/hda4: blocks in use: 5799, limits (soft = 8000, hard = 10000)
                    inodes in use: 1454, limits (soft = 3000, hard = 4000)

## 4.3 Assigning quota for a bunch of users with the same value

To rapidly set quotas for, say 100 users, on my system to the same value as my user bob, I would first edit bob's quota information by hand, then execute:

    edquota -p bob `awk -F: '$3 > 499 {print $1}' /etc/passwd`

assuming that you are using csh, and that you assign your user UID's starting with 500.

In addition to edquota, there are 3 terms which you should familiarize yourself with: Soft Limit, Hard Limit, and Grace Period.

## 4.4 Soft Limit

_Soft limit_ indicates the maximum amount of disk usage a quota user has on a partition. When combined with grace period, it acts as the border line, which a quota user is issued warnings about his impending quota violation when passed.

## 4.5 Hard Limit

Hard limit works only when grace period is set. It specifies the absolute limit on the disk usage, which a quota user can't go beyond his hard limit.

## 4.6 Grace Period

Executed with the command "edquota -t", grace period is a time limit before the soft limit is enforced for a file system with quota enabled. Time units of sec(onds), min(utes), hour(s), day(s), week(s), and month(s) can be used. This is what you'll see with the command "edquota -t":

    Time units may be: days, hours, minutes, or seconds
    Grace period before enforcing soft limits for users:
    /dev/hda2: block grace period: 0 days, file grace period: 0 days

Change the 0 days part to any length of time you feel reasonable. I personally would choose 7 days (or 1 week).

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