SUMMARY: problem with quota: EXPIRED vs. NOT STARTED

From: Claus Assmann (ca@informatik.uni-kiel.dbp.de)
Date: Mon Feb 08 1993 - 06:40:52 CST


In <1koekmINNneo@mine.informatik.uni-kiel.dbp.de> I asked about a problem
with quotas. They didn't worked as expected on /var, especially /var/spool/mail.
I got three answers:

Frank Peters <fwp@CC.MsState.Edu> wrote:

! One basic rule. Quotas don't work for /var....especially /var/spool/mail.
! The reason is that many files written to /var (especially mail files)
! for the user are actually written by a root process which then changes
! permissions and ownership as needed. Since quotas aren't enforced for
! root this causes a lot of strange behavior.

Neil W Rickert <rickert@cs.niu.edu> wrote:

! I believe your problem is due to the fact that the mailbox is usually
! being written to as 'root' when the mail is delivered. Since root is
! permitted to violate quota, this changes the way the kernel handles
! quota violations.

Other useful suggestions came from Rob Quinn <rjq@phys.ksu.edu>.

I turned off quotas for /var, as the answers suggested.
Since we now have different servers for news and mail, the problem is
not so severe anymore (some users kept all their mail in /var/spool/mail
instead of copying it into their own mailbox after they have read it).

Thanks to all for answering my questions,

Claus

-- 
So what ?



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