quota for all users

[Mahesh Koli]

Is there any easier way to set quota for all users ? I have 800 users and 10 different systems. I want to avoid using script using /etc/passwod input.

[Stuart Browne]

You want quota's for individual users?

You can set a default user quota, as well as a default group quota, which can then be refined per user/group should the need be required.

The Quota-HOWTO on at http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Quota.html has all the details on this, and much much more.

(NOTE: Most modern distributions have quota support built into the kernel already).

[Mahesh Koli]

I want to add default quota to all users.

[Edwin Buck]

Default quotas are not implemented for users in the linux quota system.

This has to do with the quota being bound to the user id / group id. The authentication model determines these values, and linux can handle many different authentication models (see: pam, the pluggable authentication module). Finally, many authentication models have no concept of a "default" user or "default" values which are accessible from any users's login context.

Some extensions to quota have been proposed, including setting the quota for all possible uid's and gid's. That won't happen soon, since it is incredibly wasteful in disk space consider you would be settin quotas on the many thousands (or millions) of users who will never be created or used. Also setting quotas on all users is generally a bad idea on UNIX / LINUX systems where system services run as users instead of root (to enhance security).

Tracking down the mail user, database user, web user, ftp user, etc. and determining the appropriate amount of quota to set so email, oracle, apache, ftpd, etc. don't stop working quickly makes setting quotas on individual users seem a much better solution.

By the way, you don't need to use a password file to set quotas for all your users. Once you setup the "default" quota on user "bob" and you have a list of other users ("jane", "sally", and "jim") you wish to set identical quotas on, you can use the simple shell script:

#!/bin/sh
for USER in jane sally jim; do
edquota -p user1 "$USER"
done