jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu (Joe Smith) (07/28/90)
(Sun-3/140, SunOS 4.0) We seem to be having problems with quotas getting out of touch with reality. Basically, quota's idea of user's space usage isn't updated - it gets behind. This leads to the disk filling up when someone's job goes berserk, or to denied writes even though the user has cleaned up. Running quotacheck by hand fixes the quotas. I've RTFM 2x and checked the installation (though I've been known to miss things on occaison :-)). Quotas are enabled in the current /vmunix, and quota{on,check} are run from rc. The manual mentions that quotacheck should be run at boot-up and warns: quotacheck accesses the raw device in calculating the actual disk usage for each user. Thus, the file systems checked should be quiescent while quotacheck is running. Would putting quotacheck in the crontab fix our problem? If so, just what is a 'quiescent' file system? Is there any way to check whether it's safe to run? If nothing can be writing while quotacheck runs, then the system has to be single-user, no? Maybe just running quotaon regularly would do it. But why would the quotas go 'off'? I'm beginning to ramble - you get the picture. Any suggestions? Joe Smith University of Pennsylvania jes@mbio.med.upenn.edu Dept. of Biochemistry and Biophysics (215) 898-8348 Philadelphia, PA 19104-6059