How to Set Up User Quotas

Prerequisites

Before setting up quotas, make sure you have:

• SSH access to your VPS
• Root or sudo privileges
• Separate home partition (quotas work on mounted filesystems)

Step 1: Check if Quotas are Enabled

Connect to your VPS:

ssh hxroot@YOUR_SERVER_IP -p 22

mount | grep -E "usrquota|grpquota"

If you see usrquota in mount options, quotas are ready.

Step 2: Enable Quotas on Filesystem (if not already)

Edit /etc/fstab:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Find the line for /home and add usrquota,grpquota:

/dev/sda1 /home ext4 defaults,usrquota,grpquota 0 0

Remount the partition:

sudo mount -o remount /home

Step 3: Create Quota Database Files

sudo quotacheck -cug /home

sudo quotacheck -avug

Step 4: Enable Quotas

sudo quotaon -avug

Step 5: Set Quota for a User

sudo edquota -u username

This opens an editor. Set soft and hard limits (in KB):

Filesystem             blocks       soft       hard     inodes     soft     hard
/dev/sda1             2048000    5120000    6144000     123456        0        0

• soft – Warn user before reaching hard limit
• hard – Absolute limit (cannot exceed)
• blocks – Disk space (1 block = 1KB, so 5GB = 5242880)
• inodes – Number of files/directories (0 = unlimited)

Step 6: Set Grace Period (Time allowed over soft limit)

sudo setquota -t 86400 86400 /home

86400 seconds = 24 hours.

Per-user grace period:

sudo edquota -T username

Step 7: View Quotas

Check all quotas:

sudo repquota -a

Check user quota:

sudo quota -u username

User checks their own quota:

quota -s

Step 8: Set Same Quota for Multiple Users (Prototype)

Set quota for a prototype user, then copy:

sudo edquota -p prototypeuser targetuser1 targetuser2 targetuser3

Disable Quotas for a User

sudo setquota -u username 0 0 0 0 /home

Check Quota Status

sudo quotaon -p /home