Roadmap — upcoming releases and platform changes.
Platform Changes — v1.8.0 drops support for macOS, AIX, Solaris, and NetBSD.
Set 50Gb soft and hard diskusage limits for user johan on filesystem /home
quotatool -u johan -b -q 50G -l 50G /home
See more examples below
quotatool is already in your package manager:
- Ubuntu, Mint, Debian:
sudo apt-get install quotatool - Fedora, Red Hat, CentOS, AlmaLinux, Rocky Linux:
dnf install quotatoolyum install quotatool(on RHEL-derivatives, quotatool is in the EPEL repository) - openSUSE:
zypper install quotatool - Gentoo Linux:
emerge quotatool
./configure
make
sudo make install
(use gmake on *BSD)
quotatool { -u uid | -g gid } [ options ... ] filesystem
quotatool { -u | -g } { -i | -b } -t time filesystem
quotatool { -u uid | -g gid } -r filesystem
quotatool { -u uid | -g gid } -d filesystem
Both -u (user) and -g (group) quotas are supported on all platforms.
-u uid username or uid.
-g gid groupname or gid.
See examples below how to handle non-existent uid/gid
-b set block limits
-i set inode limits
-q n set soft limit to n blocks/inodes
-l n set hard limit to n blocks/inodes
quotatool accepts the units Kb, Mb, Gb, Tb, bytes and blocks
to modify limit arguments. Units are base 2 for blocks (1k = 1024)
and base 10 for inodes (1k = 1000).
Use +/- to raise/lower quota by the specified amount.
n can be integer or floating point
See examples below.
-R Raise only - avoid accidentally lowering quotas for a user/group
-t time set global grace period to time.
The time parameter consists of an optional
'+' or '-' modifier, a number, and one of:
'sec', 'min', 'hour', 'day', 'week', and
'month'. If a +/- modifier is present, the
current quota will be increased/reduced by
the amount specified
-r restart grace period for uid or gid
-h print a usage message
-v verbose mode -- print status messages during execution
use this twice for even more information
-n do everything except set the quota. useful with -v
to see what is supposed to happen
-V show version
filesystem is either device name (eg /dev/sda1) or mountpoint (eg /home)
Set soft block limit to 800Mb, hard block limit to 1.2 Gb for user mpg4 on /home:
quotatool -u mpg4 -b -q 800M -l 1.2G /home
Raise soft block limit by 100M for non-existent gid 12345 on /dev/loop3:
quotatool -g :12345 -b -q +100M /dev/loop3
Set soft inode limit to 1.8k (1800), hard inode limit to 2000 for user johan on /var:
quotatool -u johan -i -q 1.8K -l 2000 /var
Set the global block grace period to one week on /home:
quotatool -u -b -t "1 week" /home
Restart inode grace period for user johan on root filesystem:
quotatool -u johan -i -r /
- Grace periods are set on a "global per quotatype and filesystem" basis only. Each quotatype (usrquota / grpquota) on each filesystem has two grace periods
- one for block limits and one for inode limits. It is not possible to set different grace periods for users on the same filesystem.
BSD-note: On BSD (FreeBSD, OpenBSD), the grace period is cached by the kernel
at quotaon time. After setting the grace period with -t, a quotaoff/quotaon
cycle is required for the new value to take effect. This is the same behavior as
edquota -t on BSD — it is a BSD kernel design choice, not a limitation of quotatool.
-
Using non-existent uids/gids like ":12345" can be useful when configuring quotas on a mounted filesystem which is a separate system in it self, like when preparing an install image or repairing a filesystem from another installation.
-
Limit arguments can be specified in several ways, these are all equivalent: 1M 1m 1Mb 1 "Mb"
-
Use +/- to raise/lower quotas relative to current limits
-
Use -v (or -v -v) to see verbose/debug info when running commands
quotatool currently builds and works well on:
-- Linux -- Quota formats: old, vfsv0, vfsv1 and "generic" Filesystems: ext2, ext3, ext4, ReiserFS and XFS
-- BSD -- FreeBSD, OpenBSD (UFS, FFS)
See PLATFORM-CHANGES.md for details on platforms dropped in v1.8.0 (macOS, AIX, Solaris, NetBSD). Users on these platforms can use quotatool v1.7.x, which continues to receive bug fixes.
Missing a feature or found a bug? Add an issue on https://github.com/ekenberg/quotatool/issues
quotatool has VM-based test suites for all supported platforms. Tests boot real kernels in QEMU/KVM and run quota operations. All tests run from a Linux host.
Prerequisites: Linux host with KVM support (/dev/kvm).
test/check-deps.sh # show what's needed
test/bsd/check-deps.sh # BSD-specific deps
25+ vendor kernels (Ubuntu, Debian, RHEL/Alma, Fedora, openSUSE), ext4 and XFS, three boot paths (virtme-ng, QEMU+9p, QEMU+Alpine).
./configure && make # build quotatool
test/run-tests --setup --smoke # download kernels, smoke test
test/run-tests --all # full matrix
test/run-tests --kernel debian-12 # single kernel
test/run-tests --tier 1 # tier 1 only
test/run-tests --list # show all kernels and tiers
test/run-tests --help # full list of options
First run downloads vendor kernels. Subsequent runs reuse them.
Results are saved to test/results/.
FreeBSD 14.4 and OpenBSD 7.8 in full-OS VMs. Builds quotatool inside each VM, runs the same quota operations as the Linux tests.
test/bsd/run-tests --setup # download images, provision VMs
test/bsd/run-tests --all # FreeBSD + OpenBSD
test/bsd/run-tests --freebsd # FreeBSD only
test/bsd/run-tests --openbsd # OpenBSD only
test/bsd/run-tests --interactive freebsd # SSH into VM with quotas
First run downloads ~660MB (FreeBSD) and installs OpenBSD from CD (~300MB). Subsequent runs use provisioned snapshots (~15s boot).
If a test fails, run it with --verbose:
test/run-tests --kernel <name> --verbose
This software is available under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) 2.0 or any later version.