Table of Contents
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@RHELv4u4:~# cat /etc/fstab | grep usrquota /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol02 /home ext3 usrquota,grpquota 0 0
Next you need to remount the file system.
root@RHELv4u4:~# 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@RHELv4u4:~# quotacheck -cug /home root@RHELv4u4:~# 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@RHELv4u4:~# quotaon -vaug
Issue the quotaoff command to stop all complaints.
root@RHELv4u4:~# quotaoff -vaug