quotas

[Tim Henderson]

>
>> We have a mail server running postfix/dovecot on ubuntu 9.10 using
>> ext3 as the underlying filesystem and filesystem quotas turned on.  We
>> have run into a couple instances of people complaining about being
>> overquota when they are not and du -s does not seem to match what
>> quota -v is saying.  This last instance quota -v was about 49500 and
>> du -s on the user's home directory was about 40000, they had about 700
>> files total so I can't see inode count causing a problem.  I searched
>> the rest of the filesystem just to make sure that user did not own any
>> other files and they did not.  A quotacheck on the filesystem repaired
>> the issue, quota -v was then showing the same as du -s.  Any ideas why
>> this might be the case and what I might do to fix this?
>>
>
> With very little research done on my end, I would assume a simple
> cronjob running quotacheck, maybe once an hour, should suffice.
>
> Not sure why they don't match.  Perhaps quotacheck ran earlier in the
> day when the quota was higher and only updates once a day...? Not sure,
> as I am a novice with quota's.
>
> Tim H.
>

NOTE:

It may be necessary to run quotaoff prior to the quotacheck to prevent 
further quota corruption.  quotaon could be run following the completion.

Tim H.