quotacheck(8) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | NOTE | SEE ALSO | FILES | AUTHOR | COLOPHON

quotacheck(8)            System Manager's Manual           quotacheck(8)

NAME         top

       quotacheck - scan a filesystem for disk usage, create, check and
       repair quota files

SYNOPSIS         top

       quotacheck [ -gubcfinvdMmR ] [ -F quota-format ] -a | filesystem

DESCRIPTION         top

       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.

OPTIONS         top

       -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.

NOTE         top

       quotacheck should only be run by super-user. Non-privileged users
       are presumably not allowed to read all the directories on the
       given filesystem.

SEE ALSO         top

       quota(1), quotactl(2), fstab(5), quotaon(8), repquota(8),
       convertquota(8), setquota(8), edquota(8), fsck(8), efsck(8),
       e2fsck(8), xfsck(8)

FILES         top

       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

AUTHOR         top

       Jan Kara <jack@suse.cz>
       Based on old quotacheck by:
       Edvard Tuinder <ed@elm.net>
       Marco van Wieringen <mvw@planets.elm.net>

COLOPHON         top

       This page is part of the quota (Linux Diskquota Tools) project.
       Information about the project can be found at [unknown -- if you
       know, please contact man-pages@man7.org] It is not known how to
       report bugs for this man page; if you know, please send a mail to
       man-pages@man7.org.  This page was obtained from the project's
       upstream Git repository
       ⟨git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/utils/quota/quota-tools.git⟩ on
       2023-12-22.  (At that time, the date of the most recent commit
       that was found in the repository was 2022-12-06.)  If you
       discover any rendering problems in this HTML version of the page,
       or you believe there is a better or more up-to-date source for
       the page, or you have corrections or improvements to the
       information in this COLOPHON (which is not part of the original
       manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

                             Fri Jul 20 2001               quotacheck(8)

Pages that refer to this page: quota(1)quotasync(1)quotactl(2)convertquota(8)edquota(8)repquota(8)setquota(8)systemd-quotacheck.service(8)