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Understanding Disk Quotas

Checkquota

Use the command checkquota to view your current disk usage and quotas. Here's an example output of this command

Terminal screenshot displaying the output of the checkquota command. The output includes two tables that show usage and limits for the home, scratch and data directories. Key table columns include: directory path, usage percentages, limits, inode counts. The output also shows a table for the jobtmp directory which is the storage for jobs and not for long-term use.
Output of the checkquota command

In the output of the checkquota command, each line represents a top level directory that you have access to such us /oscar/home, /oscar/scratch /data, and /jobtmp (a temporary storage directory for your jobs). The columns of the output show different types of quotas and limits that we explain below.

Types of Quota:

Disk usage and quotas are calculated separately for top level directories. Two types of quotas are calculated for each of these directories:

Disk space usage

This usage is expressed in Gigabytes (G) or Terabytes (T) . This is the total size of all the files in that directory and it does not depend upon the number of files. Run the command checkquota to see your disk usage and quota. Here's an example:

Terminal screenshot displaying the output of the checkquota command. This screenshot highlights the table columns corresponding to disk usage, specifically, the amount of disk usage in percent, Gigabytes and the soft and hard limits for the corresponding directory path
Output of the checkquota command highlighting disk usage statistics

Inode usage

This is the total number of files and directories in the particular directory. This number does not depend upon the size of the files. Run the command checkquota to see your inode usage and quota. Here's an example:

Terminal screenshot displaying the output of the checkquota command. This screenshot highlights the table columns corresponding to the count and limits of files and directories (inodes) for the corresponding directory path
Output of the checkquota command highlighting inode statistics

Soft Limits vs Hard Limits

All quotas have a soft limit (SLimit) and hard limit (HLimit). When usage exceeds the soft limit, a grace period associated with this limit begins. During the grace period, the usage is allowed to increase up to the hard limit. When the usage reaches the hard limit or when the grace period expires, the user is not allowed to write any files to that particular directory.

Usage State

The "Usage State" column shows the status of the grace period for a particular directory. Here are some of the status messages:

SOFT_EXCEEDED

This indicates that your usage of the disk space or inodes has exceeded the soft limit and you are still within the grace period. Check the Grace_Period column to see the number of days left in the grace period. You may continue writing data into this directory until the end of the grace period, as long as you do not exceed the hard limit

GRACE_EXPIRED

This indicates that your usage has exceeded the soft limit AND the grace period has expired. You will not be able to write data into that directory, but you can remove files.

HARD_EXCEEDED

This indicates that your usage has reached the hard limit. You will not be able to write data into that directory, but you can remove data.

OK

This indicates that your usage of the disk space as well as inodes in within the soft quota.

PreviousResolving quota issuesNextInspecting Disk Usage (Ncdu)

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