quotacheck - scan a filesystem for disk usage, create, check and
repair quota files
quotacheck [ -gubcfinvdMmR ] [ -F
quota-format ] -a | filesystem
quotacheck examines each filesystem, builds a table of
current disk usage, and compares this table against that recorded in the
disk quota file for the filesystem (this step is omitted if option -c
is specified). If any inconsistencies are detected, both the quota file and
the current system copy of the incorrect quotas are updated (the latter only
occurs if an active filesystem is checked which is not advised). By default,
only user quotas are checked. quotacheck expects each filesystem to
be checked to have quota files named [a]quota.user and
[a]quota.group located at the root of the associated filesystem. If a
file is not present, quotacheck will create it.
If the quota file is corrupted, quotacheck tries to save as
much data as possible. Rescuing data may need user intervention. With no
additional options quotacheck will simply exit in such a situation.
When in interactive mode (option -i) , the user is asked for advice.
Advice can also be provided from command line (see option -n) , which
is useful when quotacheck is run automatically (ie. from script) and
failure is unacceptable.
quotacheck should be run each time the system boots and
mounts non-valid filesystems. This is most likely to happen after a system
crash.
It is strongly recommended to run quotacheck with quotas
turned off for the filesystem. Otherwise, possible damage or loss to data in
the quota files can result. It is also unwise to run quotacheck on a
live filesystem as actual usage may change during the scan. To prevent this,
quotacheck tries to remount the filesystem read-only before starting
the scan. After the scan is done it remounts the filesystem read-write. You
can disable this with option -m. You can also make quotacheck
ignore the failure to remount the filesystem read-only with option
-M.
- -b, --backup
- Forces quotacheck to make backups of the quota file before writing
the new data.
- -v, --verbose
- quotacheck reports its operation as it progresses. Normally it
operates silently. If the option is specified twice, also the current
directory is printed (note that printing can slow down the scan
measurably).
- -d, --debug
- Enable debugging mode. It will result in a lot of information which can be
used in debugging the program. The output is very verbose and the scan
will be slow.
- -u, --user
- Only user quotas listed in /etc/mtab or on the filesystems
specified are to be checked. This is the default action.
- -g, --group
- Only group quotas listed in /etc/mtab or on the filesystems
specified are to be checked.
- -c, --create-files
- Don't read existing quota files. Just perform a new scan and save it to
disk. quotacheck also skips scanning of old quota files when they
are not found.
- -f, --force
- Forces checking and writing of new quota files on filesystems with quotas
enabled. This is not recommended as the created quota files may be out of
sync.
- -M, --try-remount
- This flag forces checking of filesystem in read-write mode if a remount
fails. Do this only when you are sure no process will write to a
filesystem while scanning.
- -m, --no-remount
- Don't try to remount filesystem read-only. See comment with option
-M.
- -i, --interactive
- Interactive mode. By default quotacheck exits when it finds an
error. In interactive mode user is asked for input instead. See option
-n.
- -n,
--use-first-dquot
- If the quota files become corrupted, it is possible for duplicate entries
for a single user or group ID to exist. Normally in this case,
quotacheck exits or asks user for input. When this option is set,
the first entry found is always used (this option works in interactive
mode too).
- -F,
--format=format-name
- Check and fix quota files of specified format (ie. don't perform format
auto-detection). This is recommended as detection might not work well on
corrupted quota files. Possible format names are: vfsold Original
quota format with 16-bit UIDs / GIDs, vfsv0 Quota format with
32-bit UIDs / GIDs, 64-bit space usage, 32-bit inode usage and limits,
vfsv1 Quota format with 64-bit quota limits and usage, rpc
(quota over NFS), xfs (quota on XFS filesystem)
- -a, --all
- Check all mounted non-NFS filesystems in /etc/mtab
- -R, --exclude-root
- When used together with the -a option, all filesystems except for
the root filesystem are checked for quotas.
quotacheck should only be run by super-user. Non-privileged
users are presumably not allowed to read all the directories on the given
filesystem.
quota(1), quotactl(2), fstab(5),
quotaon(8), repquota(8), convertquota(8),
setquota(8), edquota(8), fsck(8), efsck(8),
e2fsck(8), xfsck(8)
- aquota.user
or aquota.group
- located at filesystem root with quotas (version 2 quota, non-XFS
filesystems)
- quota.user or
quota.group
- located at filesystem root with quotas (version 1 quota, non-XFS
filesystems)
- /etc/mtab
- names and locations of mounted filesystems
Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
Based on old quotacheck by:
Edvard Tuinder <ed@elm.net>
Marco van Wieringen <mvw@planets.elm.net>