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1. Some concepts

1.1 Per device/partition control

Disk quotas are managed partition per partition. There is no relation between the disk quota setup for each partition. Further, you may enable disk quota on some partitions while disabling it one others.

1.2 User and group quotas

You may control disk quota user per user. You can also work at the group level. Both quotas are setup completely independently. A group with a hundred of users may have a disk space quota of much less than the total of all disk space quota of its users.

When a file is created by a user, it belong to that user and to some group. The disk quota record of the user is updated and the disk quota record of the group is updated.

A user may have plenty of available disk quota, but the group may be out of quota. Because of that the user won't be able to use more disk space.

1.3 Group quotas and Members default quotas

Linuxconf lets you manage quota with great flexibility. While you can configure the quota limits user per user, most administrators will choose to operate more globally. Further, Linuxconf lets you partially fill quota specifications. This lets you used some defaults for a user and override only a single specification (maximum file allowed for example)

1.4 Disk quota information

You can control to aspect with disk quotas: The number of files and directories owned by a user (or group) and the amount of disk space own. Both information is controlled separately. It is possible to have no limit on one while enforcing some limits on the other.

Each aspect is controlled by three parameters:

1.5 Possible values for a limit

A given limit may have three values:

1.6 Effective quotas for users

Disk quotas for a user are influenced by three setups:

1.7 Effective quotas for groups

Disk quotas for a group are influenced by two setups:


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