Linux Quotas

How to Set Up User Quotas

The following instructions are provided for your convenience. We are not responsible for errors caused by these instructions and we do not provide support for configuring quotas. For detailed instructions read the reference manual for your distro.

CentOS / Fedora / Redhat

Install quota

Run the following command to install the quota package.

yum install quota

Modify /etc/fstab

Enable quotas on the partitions in /etc/fstab. Partitions that do not have quotas enabled normally look something like:

/dev/hda1       /       ext2    defaults        1       1
/dev/hda2       /usr    ext2    defaults        1       1

To enable user quota support on a file system, add ,usrquota to the fourth field containing the word "defaults" (man fstab for details).

/dev/hda1       /       ext2    defaults,usrquota        1       1
/dev/hda2       /usr    ext2    defaults,usrquota       1       1

Enable quotas on startup

Edit /etc/rc.local and add the following command.

quotaon -a

Add weekly quota check

Edit /etc/crontab and add the following command.

0  3  *  *  0 quotaoff -a;/sbin/quotacheck -aum;quotaon -a;

Restart and create quota database

Restart your server to activate quotas. After restarting execute the following commands.

quotaoff -a
quotacheck -caum
quotaon -a

Debian / Ubuntu

Install quota

Run the following command to install the quota package.

apt-get install quota