Quotas - VPS v2 Virtual Server - virtual server hosting and internet web hosting

Quotas affect the amount of disk space users consume in their home directories, e-mail, and Web, and not how much space a specific program uses. This prevents abuse to the system (in general, bad things happen when a disk is full) and allocates resources as needed.

The quota has a soft limit that you may temporarily exceed, that gives you time to fix the problem. The quota also has a hard limit that you may never exceed. When the quota hard limit is met, nothing can write to the disk. E-mail is not accepted, logs are not written, installs do not complete, and guestbooks and forms do not save to file

When you use iManager or vadduser to create accounts, the quota option is automatically enabled so that you can assign the quota to the user. The quotaon/quotaoff setting is in the /etc/fstab file.

Your user consumes allotted disk space according to privilege. Use the following examples as guidelines for setting quotas.

Example A: User Anne has only e-mail privileges. All of her 5Meg quota will be used for this service.
Example B: If user Joe has a 5 Meg quota with FTP, E-mail, and Web privileges, Joe can consume the 5 Megs among the three services. He might have an extensive Web site that consumes most of his quota and prefer to configure POP e-mail accounts for himself and his employees.
Example C: User Bob, maintains a smaller Web site, but has a traveling sales force of employees who need to check e-mail from the office, home, and from laptops while traveling. Bob requires 10 Megs and configures IMAP e-mail accounts for his employees.

See the quota man page for more information.

Checking a User’s Quota
To check the amount of disk space being used on your VPS v2 Virtual Server, type:

% quota username

Disk quotas for user (uid 11487):

Filesystem blocks quota limit grace files quotalimit grace

/usr 80030 281600 309760 255 55000 57750

The following table defines the information from the quota command.

Column	Description
File system	This indicates that quota is checking for any files that you own on the / volume. (Files on the /backup volume are not counted against your quota.)
Usage	The usage indicates the space that is currently being used. Usage is displayed in 1024 bytes. This server is using 81.9 MB of disk space (80030x1024).
Quota	The disk space allowed for a VPS v2 Virtual Server indicated in blocks. This user has 275 megabytes by default (281600/1024=275). The quota is a soft limit, meaning the server continues to function when it reaches the quota.
Limit	The limit is a hard limit, meaning the user is unable to write to disk when it exceeds this limit. Each user is allowed a 10% (275+27.5=302.5 \| 302.5*1024=309760) excess of its quota before the limit is reached.
Grace period	The grace period is a time allowed for being over quota before a hard limit is reached. The grace period is 7 days. You can go over quota and still continue to function as long as you do not go over quota by 10% or more or for over 7 days.
Files	Your quota is also controlled by the number of files you have and the amount of disk space. We currently give you 200 files per meg (275*200=55000). The files limit has a quota and grace, which function just like the disk space quota.

Note: The root user does not have a set quota. The root user is over quota when the VPS v2 Virtual Server reaches maximum capacity.

When Log Files Exceed Quotas
The server generates e-mail, FTP, system, and Web log files. Log files grow very rapidly on an active server. To avoid going over the limit due to log files, consider setting up a cron file that e-mails the needed logs to you and then deletes them. See “Using cron” in Chapter 9.

Important Commands and Files
The following table describes commands, directories, and files for managing user accounts.

Name	Type	Description
adduser	command	Creates new user accounts for e-mail ftp, shell, and Web.
chpass	command	Changes a users’ password
edquota user	command	Edits users’ quotas
passwd	command	Changes a password
pw	command	Adds, edits, and removes users and groups.
su [user]	command	Switch user and keep original environment variables.
su – [user]	command	Switch user and reset to the designated user’s environment variables.
sudo [command]	command	Execute a command (listed in /usr/local/etc/sudoers)
vrmuser	command	Removes a user account
vadduser	command	Creates new user accounts for e-mail ftp, shell, and Web
vedituser	command	Edits a user account
vi sudo	command	Enables root to edit the /usr/local/etc/sudoers file.
vlistuser	command	Lists all users, their home directory paths, and quotas
vpasswd	command	Changes a password
/home/user name	directory	Default user’s home directory
/etc/adduser.conf	file	Configuration defaults for the adduser script
/etc/master. passwd	file	The master password file
/etc/group	file	Stores a list of all groups, their GIDs, and members of each group.
/etc/fstab	file	The file where quotas are turned on/off.
/usr/local/ etc/sudoers	file	Edited only by root, this file contains a list of users and groups that can perform commands as well as a list of commands.
/etc/	file	Contains the server settings

For More Information
The FreeBSD Handbook, found at:

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