XFS User and Project Quotas
Quotas are baked into the XFS file system so setting them is trivial and should be easy to script up. For now, here’s how to set up quotas, add and remove them.
Enable quotas
Example setting user quotas on home:
Edit entry in /etc/fstab:
Rocky Linux 8 and 9
/dev/mapper/rl-home /home xfs defaults,usrquota,grpquota,prjquota 0 0
Note the last two numbers may differ from this, just make the changes after defaults to add the quota support.
Now execute the following commands:
systemctl daemon-reload
mount -o remount /home
Future reboots will mount the storage correctly, this is just to avoid having to reboot the server to enable the quotas.
Test the quotas
Test that the quotas are applied, if you’re not seeing this reboot the machine:
Rocky Linux 8 and 9
xfs_quota -x -c "state" /home
User quota state on /home (/dev/mapper/rl-home)
Accounting: ON
Enforcement: ON
Inode: #134 (2 blocks, 2 extents)
Blocks grace time: [7 days]
Blocks max warnings: 5
Inodes grace time: [7 days]
Inodes max warnings: 5
Realtime Blocks grace time: [7 days]
Group quota state on /home (/dev/mapper/rl-home)
Accounting: ON
Enforcement: ON
Inode: #136 (2 blocks, 2 extents)
Blocks grace time: [7 days]
Blocks max warnings: 5
Inodes grace time: [7 days]
Inodes max warnings: 5
Realtime Blocks grace time: [7 days]
Project quota state on /home (/dev/mapper/rl-home)
Accounting: ON
Enforcement: ON
Inode: #138 (1 blocks, 1 extents)
Blocks grace time: [7 days]
Blocks max warnings: 5
Inodes grace time: [7 days]
Inodes max warnings: 5
Realtime Blocks grace time: [7 days]
This shows that the quotas are enabled for users, groups and projects.
Report quota for users, groups and projects:
Rocky Linux 8 and 9
xfs_quota -x -c "report -h -ugp" /home
User quota on /home (/dev/mapper/rl-home)
Blocks
User ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
root 0 0 0 00 [------]
build 16K 0 0 00 [------]
Group quota on /home (/dev/mapper/rl-home)
Blocks
Group ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
root 0 0 0 00 [------]
build 16K 0 0 00 [------]
Project quota on /home (/dev/mapper/rl-home)
Blocks
Project ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
#0 16K 0 0 00 [------]
Setting user quotas
Set a user quota:
xfs_quota -x -c "limit -u bsoft=9g bhard=10g build" /home
Rerun quota report and note that there is now a soft quota of 9GB and a hard limit of 10GB:
Rocky Linux 8 and 9
xfs_quota -x -c "report -h -u" /home
User quota on /home (/dev/mapper/rl-home)
Blocks
User ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
root 0 0 0 00 [------]
build 16K 9G 10G 00 [------]
Test the quota by creating a large file as the user in their home directory:
fallocate -l 9G test.img
Now run the report and you’ll see that the user is at their soft quota but with 7 days to get below it.
xfs_quota -x -c "report -h -u" /home
User quota on /home (/dev/mapper/cl-home)
Blocks
User ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
root 0 0 0 00 [------]
build 9.1G 9G 10G 00 [7 days]
If the user tries to go over the hard limit they’ll get the following:
fallocate -l 10G test.img
fallocate: test.img: fallocate failed: Disk quota exceeded
Change the quota
The quota can be changed by setting bsoft and bhard to a new value for the user:
xfs_quota -x -c "limit bsoft=90g bhard=100g build" /home
Rerun the report to show the new quotas:
xfs_quota -x -c "report -h -u" /home
User quota on /home (/dev/mapper/cl-home)
Blocks
User ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
root 0 0 0 00 [------]
build 98.3M 90G 100G 00 [------]
Remove the quota
The quota can be removed by setting bsoft and bhard to 0m for the user:
xfs_quota -x -c "limit bsoft=0g bhard=0g build" /home
Rerunning the report shows the quota is gone again:
xfs_quota -x -c "report -h -u" /home
User quota on /home (/dev/mapper/cl-home)
Blocks
User ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
root 0 0 0 00 [------]
build 998.3M 0 0 00 [------]
Group quotas are handled in the same way but will limit all users in a particular group to a specific quota. Alternatively, XFS has project quotas which can be applied to specific directories.
Project quotas
The XFS file system supports project or directory quotas which is good for us. To enable them we need a project folder on a mount that has quotas enabled, for example /projects, and then we need to do the following to create a new project and set a quota for it.
Create projects and projid in case they don’t exist:
touch /etc/projects /etc/projid
Create the directory:
mkdir /raid/projects/testproject
Each project has a name and an ID. For example, this project is called testproject, and we’ll give it the ID of 1.
echo "1:/raid/projects/testproject" >> /etc/projects
echo "testproject:1" >> /etc/projid
User and group ownerships on the project folder are as normal with Linux, this is just for setting quotas so make sure the directory belongs to a user so they can work in it.
chown -R shane:shane /raid/projects/testproject
Initialise the project quota:
xfs_quota -x -c "project -s testproject" /raid
Setting up project testproject (path /raid/projects/testproject)...
Processed 1 (/etc/projects and cmdline) paths for project testproject with recursion depth infinite (-1).
Now set the quota for that directory:
xfs_quota -x -c "limit -p bsoft=1g bhard=2g testproject" /raid
Check the quota has been applied for the project:
xfs_quota -x -c "report -h -p" /raid
Project quota on / (/dev/mapper/cl-root)
Blocks
Project ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
#0 8.5G 0 0 00 [------]
testproject 0 1G 2G 00 [------]
As the user, try and write a big file:
cd /raid/projects/testproject
fallocate -l 1500M test.img
Rerun the quota report:
xfs_quota -x -c "report -h -p" /raid
Project quota on / (/dev/mapper/cl-root)
Blocks
Project ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
#0 8.5G 0 0 00 [------]
testproject 1.5G 1G 2G 00 [7 days]
As the user try and write another file to push over the hard limit:
fallocate -l 2500M test.img
fallocate: test.img: fallocate failed: No space left on device
Remove the quota for the project:
xfs_quota -x -c "limit -p bsoft=0m bhard=0m testproject" /raid
Note if you run a report now, you’ll still see testproject listed:
xfs_quota -x -c "report -h -p" /Project quota on / (/dev/mapper/cl-root)
Blocks
Project ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
#0 8.5G 0 0 00 [------]
testproject 1.5G 0 0 00 [------]
You also need to clear the quota to get rid of it entirely:
xfs_quota -x -c "project -C testproject" /raid
Clearing project testproject (path /raid/projects/testproject)...
Processed 1 (/etc/projects and cmdline) paths for project testproject with recursion depth infinite (-1).
xfs_quota -x -c "report -h -p" /raid
Project quota on / (/dev/mapper/cl-root)
Blocks
Project ID Used Soft Hard Warn/Grace
---------- ---------------------------------
#0 10.0G 0 0 00 [------]
Don’t forget to delete the test project from the /etc/projects and /etc/projid to make sure it is entirely gone.
Next Step
Go to the NFS User and Group Quotas page.