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 ommitted 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.