Step by step guide to implement/modify quota (soft and hard limit) for user, add/modify grace period and more in Linux with examples

Features:

• Limit storage consumption per user/group
• Based on disk block usage or inode usage
• Imposed in 2 stages (thresholds) : soft and hard

Soft limit: may be exceeded for up to the provided grace period
Hard limit: may never be exceeded under any circumstance. Once this is reached then the disk will not allow to write any more data

Pre-requisite:

• quota rpm must be installed
• quota must be enabled on the filesystem/partition on which you desire to implement the functionality.

Enable quota on the partition

For the sake of this article I will only enable userquota on /tmp partition.
Append "usrquota" as shown below for the respective partition. If you also wish to implement quota for a particular group then also append "grpquota"

Next remount your filesystem to take the changes affect

Validate the changes

As you see now my /tmp partition is re-mounted with usrquota.
Next you must create the user quota file under the respective partition.

This will create 'aquota.user' file under /tmp. Since we are running this command for the first time hence we get the error "No such file or directory". I am using "-m" because the command is being executed on a running node where the partition is in mounted state hence I do not want to be re-mounted. If you are in a single user mode then use can exclude "-m" from the above command.

Check the quota report

To check the existing usage of quota on your Linux machine execute the below command

This will give you a brief report of the current block and inode usage of the filesystem. Here for our case wince we only enabled quota but have not assigned any soft or hard limit hence most of the sections are null.

Assign/Edit Quota block limit

To assign a block limit for the first time you can either use 'setquota' or you can also use 'edquota'. Using "setquota" you can directly set the quota while with "edquota" you will be editing the existing quota value, so either can be used
How to check the total block and inode count available on my node?
Before I start explaining the steps to set or assign quota, how will someone know the inode limit or the block limit which is available with the respective partition?. To check this you can use tune2fs tool.
On RHEL 7, tune2fs is provided by "e2fsprogs" rpm so you can install this using "yum"

Next use the below syntax along with the filesystem name for which you want to get the details. In our case it is "/dev/mapper/system-tmp"

This will give you a long list of details, but for the sake of this article we will stick to the block and inode count for which you can execute the below command

As you see this filesystem will allow a total inode count of 2621440 and 10485760 block.
To get the size of the partition you can use below formula

So our /tmp partition is of 40GB.
Method 1: Using setquota
Below is the syntax to be used

In the below command I am setting a soft limit of 8GB and hard limit of 10GB for the block limit of /tmp partition for "deepak" user.

If you wish to also restrict inode count limit then you can modify the above command as below

Method 2: Using edquota
Accodingly if you wish to use "edquota" then run the command with "-u" argument as shown below

This will show you the currently set quota limits for the user "deepak". Here you can make you modification, after which save and exit the file using "wq!"
Next you can check the report of the currently allocated quota

Why my "deepak" user is not shown in the repquota command above?
As you may have noticed the above repquota is showing the status only for "root" and "ankit" user but not for "deepak" user. It is because currently user "deepak" has not created any file under /tmp so there is nothing to show.
You can get more details output of repquota using below command

As you see since currently the used block limit and inode limit is "0" hence repquota will not show any detail about this user by default unless there are any file present which is owned by the respective user under the provided filesystem.
Once I created a dummy file using "deepak" user under /tmp, I was able to get the quota report as shown below

Add/Set Grace Period

A grace period starts when you reach the soft quota limit. You can write up until the grace period expires, or until you reach the hard quota limit. Hard limits are enforced by the file system and when you reach a hard quota limit, you cannot store any additional data until you drop back below your quota limits.
If you are not assigning any grace period while setting the quota limit then by default a grace period of 7 days is considered for both block and inode limit.
You can assign grace period using "setquota" or "edquota"
Method 1: Using setquota
To assign grace period using setquota use the below syntax

For example I would like to give a grace period of 5 days

So the command to set a grace period of 5 days for block and inode limit would be

Check the quota report

So all looks fine.
Method 2: Using edquota
You can also use "edquota" to edit the quota for respective filesystem to modify the grace period using below command

The added advantage with this method is that here you can use values like "days, hours, minutes, or seconds" for assigning grace period unlike with setquota where you must provide the value only in seconds.
Once your changes are done you can save and exit the file using "wq!"

Turn Quota ON or OFF

Now here we were assigning and modifying the quota limits for user and file systems but do we know if the quota is enabled in the first place?
As if the quota is not in enabled state then there is no point in assigning these restrictions.
To check the current status of quota

Here as you see both user and group quota is disabled for /tmp partition. Since in this article we are only using user quota so I will not enable groupquota
To enable user quota

If you also wish to enable group quota then you can either combine both arguments "-ug" or you can execute the commands separately.

Next check the status again

So now quota is enabled on our filesystem for user.
To turn off the quota for both user and group on /tmp partition use below command

Validate the quota limit

I will write some dummy data on /tmp partition and will monitor my quota limit

As you see once the soft limit was reached a warning message was printed, but the writing continued. Once the hard limit was reached then write failed for "dd" command
Below is the quota report

As you see a "+" (plus) sign has appeared after the uername which means that quota limit has reached and the grace period value is reflected, which means now I have 4 days left to clear the data. But anyhow I have already reached hard limit.
I hope the article was useful.