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Diffstat (limited to 'Documentation/filesystems/quota.txt')
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diff --git a/Documentation/filesystems/quota.txt b/Documentation/filesystems/quota.txt new file mode 100644 index 000000000..32874b06e --- /dev/null +++ b/Documentation/filesystems/quota.txt @@ -0,0 +1,68 @@ + +Quota subsystem +=============== + +Quota subsystem allows system administrator to set limits on used space and +number of used inodes (inode is a filesystem structure which is associated with +each file or directory) for users and/or groups. For both used space and number +of used inodes there are actually two limits. The first one is called softlimit +and the second one hardlimit. A user can never exceed a hardlimit for any +resource (unless he has CAP_SYS_RESOURCE capability). User is allowed to exceed +softlimit but only for limited period of time. This period is called "grace +period" or "grace time". When grace time is over, user is not able to allocate +more space/inodes until he frees enough of them to get below softlimit. + +Quota limits (and amount of grace time) are set independently for each +filesystem. + +For more details about quota design, see the documentation in quota-tools package +(http://sourceforge.net/projects/linuxquota). + +Quota netlink interface +======================= +When user exceeds a softlimit, runs out of grace time or reaches hardlimit, +quota subsystem traditionally printed a message to the controlling terminal of +the process which caused the excess. This method has the disadvantage that +when user is using a graphical desktop he usually cannot see the message. +Thus quota netlink interface has been designed to pass information about +the above events to userspace. There they can be captured by an application +and processed accordingly. + +The interface uses generic netlink framework (see +http://lwn.net/Articles/208755/ and http://people.suug.ch/~tgr/libnl/ for more +details about this layer). The name of the quota generic netlink interface +is "VFS_DQUOT". Definitions of constants below are in <linux/quota.h>. +Since the quota netlink protocol is not namespace aware, quota netlink messages +are sent only in initial network namespace. + +Currently, the interface supports only one message type QUOTA_NL_C_WARNING. +This command is used to send a notification about any of the above mentioned +events. Each message has six attributes. These are (type of the argument is +in parentheses): + QUOTA_NL_A_QTYPE (u32) + - type of quota being exceeded (one of USRQUOTA, GRPQUOTA) + QUOTA_NL_A_EXCESS_ID (u64) + - UID/GID (depends on quota type) of user / group whose limit + is being exceeded. + QUOTA_NL_A_CAUSED_ID (u64) + - UID of a user who caused the event + QUOTA_NL_A_WARNING (u32) + - what kind of limit is exceeded: + QUOTA_NL_IHARDWARN - inode hardlimit + QUOTA_NL_ISOFTLONGWARN - inode softlimit is exceeded longer + than given grace period + QUOTA_NL_ISOFTWARN - inode softlimit + QUOTA_NL_BHARDWARN - space (block) hardlimit + QUOTA_NL_BSOFTLONGWARN - space (block) softlimit is exceeded + longer than given grace period. + QUOTA_NL_BSOFTWARN - space (block) softlimit + - four warnings are also defined for the event when user stops + exceeding some limit: + QUOTA_NL_IHARDBELOW - inode hardlimit + QUOTA_NL_ISOFTBELOW - inode softlimit + QUOTA_NL_BHARDBELOW - space (block) hardlimit + QUOTA_NL_BSOFTBELOW - space (block) softlimit + QUOTA_NL_A_DEV_MAJOR (u32) + - major number of a device with the affected filesystem + QUOTA_NL_A_DEV_MINOR (u32) + - minor number of a device with the affected filesystem |