Quotas on /usr filesystem

[Matthew Seaman]

On Mon, Jun 02, 2003 at 02:57:14PM +0200, Uncle GIGI wrote:

> I have a problem with filesystem quotas enabled on the /usr filesystem.
> It causes the system (FreeBSD 4.8 STABLE) to freeze. Is it because the 
> quotas utilities are on the /usr filesystem as well ?
> Thanks a lot for any suggestions.

That shouldn't matter, unless you've gone completely mad and
restricted root's quota so much that it can't install all of the
required system files under the /usr filesystem.

However, I'm at a loss as to why you would want to run quotas on the
/usr filesystem.  Typically you only want quotas enabled on partitions
where generic users have write privileges.  That might include /home
or /var, but preferably shouldn't include /usr.

What do:

    % mount
    % repquota -a

return?

One thing I've run afoul of in the past is that if you've got an old
unix system that can NFS mount your drives and that system has the
nobody UID set to -1, it can cause havoc with quotas.  On the old
system, the UID is a short integer, so '-1' is effectively the same as
'65534'.  However on FreeBSD, the UID field is 4 byte integer value,
so that the '-1' UID effectively maps onto '4294967295'.  Not a huge
problem in itself, but realise that the quota system will try and
install a quota file with enough room for 4294967295 entries, and
that's going to take up a fair chunk of your filesystem.  It also
takes forever for quotacheck(8) to run on boot up under those
circumstances.  You're unlikely to see this nowadays --- the last time
I ran into this, the "old unix" was a NeXT box, circa 1998.

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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