In: Root » Computers and technology » Linux Commands » Configuring Individual Partitions on Linux machines
Managing QuotasIn any multiuser environment, you’re bound to run across users who—either refusing to play fair or because they’re oblivious to common courtesy—practice the fine art of disk hogging, taking up more than a reasonable amount of disk space. This problem can be managed in several ways. The first and most obvious solution is to beg and plead. This rarely works. The second approach is peer pressure: You regularly and publicly post the amounts of disk space being hogged by these users. If people are at all sensitive to what others think of them, this may work. The final and most successful technique is to institute disk quotas, allowing each user to consume a certain amount of disk space and no more. Enforcement is done by the operating system. Disk quotas are usually the best option for system administrators, because the quotas are automated and don’t require that you confront the offending users. However, technical and/or political barriers may be standing in the way of using them. (For instance, the CEO may not like being told she can use only 5MB of the server disk space.) Quotas are, of course, optional— your system will be quite happy to hum along without them. Whether they will work in your environment is up to you and your management. Preparing a Disk for QuotasPreparing to use disk quotas works in two steps. Step 1 is to make the necessary settings in the /etc/fstab file and add the necessary files in each partition for which you want quota control. Step 1 must be repeated for every partition you want under quota control. Step 2 is to run the quotacheck command to set up the quotas on each of the partitions you’ve configured. Configuring Individual PartitionsDisk quotas work on either a per-user or per-group basis, with each partition allowing for their own quotas. For example, it’s possible for all users to have a quota associated with their home directories on one partition and another quota on another partition for a group project they’re part of. For each partition on which you want a quota, you’ll need to set up the usrquota option and the grpquota option, and then remount the partition. The usrquota Option Edit the /etc/fstab file so that, for each partition needing quotas, the mount options contain the usrquota option. For example, if /dev/hda5 is mounted to the /home directory and you want that directory to have user quotas, the /etc/fstab entry would be something like this:
/dev/hda5 /home ext3 defaults,usrquota 1 1
The grpquota Option Partitions needing group quota support should have the grpquota option in the /etc/fstab file, just like the usrquota option as just described. (Note that it’s acceptable to have both options enabled.) For example, if /dev/hda5 is mounted to the /home directory and you want that directory to have group quotas, the /etc/fstab entry would be similar to this:
/dev/hda5 /home ext3 defaults,grpquota 1 1
Remount the partition Now you simply need to remount the partition using umount and mount.While this act alone won’t make your quota system ready to use, you can’t skip this step! To continue this example, remounting /home on the /dev/hda5 partition would look like this:
[root@tedford /root]# umount /home
[root@tedford /home]# mount /home
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