How to give quota for linux users?

Question

I want to give quota for each user on my linux box, so that each one will get only specified amount of disk space.

Answer 1

Ideally you will have /home as a separate partition. If you do, try this:
Find the filesystem for /home, for example:
mount | grep "/home"
/dev/sda3 on /home type ext3 (rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro)
mount -o remount,quota /home
quotacheck /dev/sda3
edquota username
Set the soft and hard quotas in there. This will only apply for the current boot, to make it survive a reboot edit /etc/fstab and add ",quota" to the end of the mount options for /dev/sda3 (in this example).

Answer 2

Google is your friend

http://souptonuts.sourceforge.net/quota_tutorial.html

Answer 3

Fredley tutorial is kinda out of date. This one is the one you need: Quota Mini Howto

Basically you need to enable quotas on /etc/fstab and configure the quotas using the quota tools (edquota, mainly). Is also cool to configure quotacheck as a cron job.

Remember that quota is enabled per filesystem, so if you have 3 different partitions you have to enable and edit the quotas on each one of them. Just read the howto carefully and you will be set.