Quota Limits

Quota limits for individual users can be set up for file and data block usage on a file system. A user quota consists of limits for these resources. The following limits can be set for each resource:

An example of the use of soft limits is when the user needs to run applications that might generate large temporary files. In cases like these, quota limit violations may be allowed for a limited duration. However, if the user continuously exceeds the soft limit, no further allocations are allowed after the expiration of the time limit.

The system administrator is responsible for assigning hard and soft limits to the users, as well as setting associated time limits. Although file and data block limits can be set individually for each user, the time limits apply to the file system as a whole. Quota information associated with user IDs is stored in a quotas file, as described in “Quotas File”.