[cobalt-users] RE: disk quota errors but not sure why

[Charlie Summers <charlie@xxxxxxxxxx>]

At 12:15 PM -0500 1/18/02, Steven Young is rumored to have typed:

> Not exactly a major problem, but I'd be interested to hear if anyone else
> has experienced this and maybe resolved it?

   This is by design. This is NOT a problem, excepting that the GUI is making
you think something different is happening. One more time: THIS IS THE WAY IT
IS SUPPOSED TO WORK. The "problem" is that you don't understand what the
quota is measuring, not that the measurement is wrong.

   A quota system is designed to limit the number of innodes or filesize of a
user on a per-filesystem basis. It is _not_ designed to limit the amount of
files in a specific directory, but on the _entire_ filesystem.

   If user1 had a quota of 10M on /home/user1 _only,_ he could start storing
files on /home/public, or /home/user2 (assuming user2 had public or group
write permissions) to bypass the quota. So the system is designed that he has
10M of quota on the _entire_ filesystem (in this case /home) - and because of
that, it includes his mail (/home/spool/mail/user1) and _any_ files he places
anywhere else on the filesystem. That way, he can't get around the quotas by
stealing space from someone else.

   The admin account for a website almost always posts the lion's share of
the files in ~/web, and EVERY ONE OF THOSE FILES COUNTS AGAINST BOTH THE SITE
AND THE USER'S QUOTAS! (If you do a 'ls -lag' from a shell, you'll see the
user/group who owns the files.) So the site admin should _always_ have his
quota set identically to the site quota. A non-admin user who doesn't post to
tjhe "main" site may have a smaller quota, certainly, for private web space;
but anyone who's allowed to muck with the entire "main" site should have his
quota set identically to the site's quota. If you have two admins, they
_both_ get the site quota.

   This is another example where the GUI is hiding too much of the unix
administration, working under the false assumption that the box operator
doesn't have to learn how to administer an Internet server. Whether you're
running a Cobalt or a "real" linux box, the box administrator _needs_ to
understand a little about how the underlying operating system works. Assuming
that because you have a RaQ or Cube that the machine will do everything for
you is dangerous, since it not only won't, it _can't._

         Charlie