Configuring Disk Quota in Linux

Configuring Quota Settings
Creating, modifying, and removing quotas on either a per-user or per-group basis is done via
the edquota command. In this section, you’ll look at the usage of this command and run through
some examples as well. First, some terminology:

● Soft Limit This requested limit is placed on a user or group. If the user’s account exceeds
the soft limit, a grace period can be imposed as to how long the account can exist over the
soft limit. During this time phase, users can be warned that their accounts are over the limit.

● Hard Limit This limit is imposed by the operating system and cannot be overrun.
Any attempts to write data beyond the hard limit are denied.

● Grace Period (Time Limit) When a user’s account exceeds the soft limit, a clock starts
tracking. After the grace period expires, the user cannot access the account. The length of
this grace period should depend on the environment. A common value is one week. To
keep the account from being disabled, the user needs to remove or compress files until his
or her disk consumption falls below the soft limit