User over quota, not receiving e-mail

Howdy -- it looks like the user "fital01" is one of the users having trouble.

What output do you get if you run this command:

Mmm, it doesn't appear that the jornenyvet01 user actually has a quota.

However, what I'm hoping to get from the fital01 user is whether it's using a hard quota or a soft quota, and what the grace period is set to (if anything).

So while we may need to figure out what's going on with this one user, maybe we can start by taking a look at the quota output for fital01 first.

And you're right, on your server, you'd want to run the repquota command with "/home" rather than just "/".

Thanks!

Hmm, that user doesn't appear to have quotas enabled either... just to make sure it's not an issue with repquota, what does this command return:

quota -v fital01

Also, if you look at that user in Virtualmin, does it show them as having a quota setup?

Okay, so that user does indeed seem to be set to "unlimited" -- that is, there isn't a quota setup for them.

Was that your intention?

The steps we're going through should hopefully assist in determining the root of the problem you're seeing... the issue here is that, according to the filesystem, the jornenyvet01 user didn't have a quota set either.

If you look at that user in Virtualmin, what is it's quota set to?

Hmm, it looks like that particular user has been setup with no quota either though... in Virtualmin, they're setup with an "Unlimited" disk quota, and it looks like the filesystem agrees there.

With soft quotas, there should still be a quota set, it would just be soft rather than hard.

But with those two users (jornenyvet01 and fital01), since they're set to unlimited, they shouldn't be running into problems with soft or hard quotas at the moment.

Do you have an example of a Virtual Server where there is a quota set?

Once we find one, we can look at the quota settings for that account and determine why you're seeing that behavior.

There are two cases where the behavior you described would come up:

1. If hard quotas are being used

2. If soft quotas are being used, and a grace period was set (and surpassed)

I reviewed your system, and I don't see any grace periods set for any of your current users. So #2 shouldn't be an issue.

But, I also don't see any users with hard quotas -- the few users that do have a quota are all set to use a soft quota.

I spoke with Jamie about about all this, and one of the things he pointed out was that changing the Server Templates from Hard quotas to Soft quotas would only affect new users, not existing users.

Is it possible that the user you had trouble with was setup before you had made the switch to soft quotas? If so, that would explain the problem you ran into.

What would be advisable to do to solve the problems?

Well, since all the quotas now appear to be soft quotas, and no grace periods are set -- it looks as if you won't run into that problem with any of your current users.

I suspect you ran into that before due to a hard quota being in use for some specific users.

I don't think you'll run into problems with that any longer though. If for some reason you do, let us know so we can look into that. If you're able to let us know before you change that quota, that would be helpful!

So we are still having problems and why I asked you kindly to take a look at jornenyvet01.

Mmm, while I did look at that user, I didn't realize they were currently experiencing that problem. I figured they were okay since they didn't have a quota set.

Knowing that gave me an idea of where to look, and I think I see where the issue lies. I'll get back with you shortly regarding what to do about that.

Okay, so, it's correct that the user jornenyvet01 has no user quota set.

However, that user does have a group quota set -- since it's a Virtual Server owner, that's how the quota for the entire Virtual Server is enforced, so that no specific Virtual Server can exceed an allotted amount of space.

So, that particular Virtual Server as a whole is using too much space.

Now, in your case, you would like to use soft quotas.

Systems handle this differently, but some have a default grace period set. When a grace period is set along with a soft quota -- the user may only exceed their soft quota for the length of the grace period.

It looks like that's set to 7 days on your system... so that means once a user (or Virtual Server) surpasses their quota, they'd have 7 days to reduce how much space they're using, or else it would prevent them from adding new files.

Before we get to how to get things working the way you mentioned -- I did want to offer that we recommend using hard quotas. Without that, a user (or a malfunctioning application) could accidentally use up all the space on the server, which would cause a lot of trouble :-)

Using soft quotas and grace periods (what you have now) is a compromise to that... there's still a risk that a user could use up all the space on the server, but it would have to happen all within a week. If you're using the quota notifications (setup in Limits and Validation -> Disk Quota Monitoring), users would be notified that they're over quota, and would have a week to reduce their usage.

Knowing that, if you'd still like to use soft quotas and not use grace periods (ie, users can technically use as much space as they want for as long as they want), let me know and I'll work with Jamie to figure out what's needed to get all that changed for all of your users.

It's possible that's as simple as:

1. Going into Webmin -> System -> Disk Quotas -> Users -> Edit Grace Times, and change both Block and Time to 0

2. Going into Webmin -> System -> Disk Quotas -> Groups -> Edit Grace Times, and change both Block and Time to 0

But I need to verify that the above effects existing users as well as new ones.

Again though, we don't recommend that particular option, as it makes it easy for bad things to accidentally happen :-)

Well, here's the problem... it's not easy to change this mid-stream, and it's also not possible to use both hard and soft quotas on the same account.

But, we can certainly discuss your options :-)

So, if you were to go into System Settings -> Server Templates -> Default -> Administrative User, and change the Disk Quota Type from Soft to Hard -- that will only affect new users.

The only way to change existing users would be to backup your mailbox users, change the quota format, then restore the mailbox users.

You can generate a backup of just the users, it doesn't need to be a full backup.

However, as far as using both a soft and hard quota for your users -- Virtualmin unfortunately doesn't support a setup such as that.... you would need to choose between either a hard quota or a soft quota.