I just started fiddling with quotas for email users (never needed them before, but one customer would like to be informed if their mailboxes occupy too much space), and would kindly ask you to provide some pointers about these questions:
I'd like to have Virtualmin auto-send warning emails to email users who exceed a certain MB limit in their mailbox, without hard enforcing the limit. What would I need to do that?
Where can I change, for an existing virtual server, the setting "Administration User / Disk Quota Type" from the Template?
In "Limits and Validation / Disk Quota Monitoring", the text on top of the page would suggest that, in addition to the periodic checks being configured there, a system with "group quotas enabled" can do other types of checks that are automatic? What are those checks exactly?
Thanks in advance!
Comments
Submitted by andreychek on Tue, 01/28/2014 - 08:57 Comment #1
Howdy -- you can setup disk quota monitoring/warnings in Limits and Validation -> Disk Quota Monitoring.
We do typically recommend hard quotas, to make sure one user can't accidentally use up all the disk. You could always set a large hard quota, and have a warning go out after a certain percentage is used, which would give the user plenty of time to fix it before the hard limit is reached.
However. you can Virtualmin to use soft quotas, from the default hard quotas, by going into System Settings -> Server Templates -> Default -> Administrative User, and setting "Disk quotas type".
Once the Server Template is set to soft quotas, you should be able to convert a user to a soft quota by re-saving their quota (ie, just make a slight change to it and hit save).
Both user and group quotas are enabled and in use. All users within a given Virtual Server belong to the same group, and that group is required to be within the total server quota, even if their user quota isn't reached yet.
That is tested as part of the scheduled disk quota monitoring.
Submitted by Locutus on Tue, 01/28/2014 - 09:57 Comment #2
Thanks Eric!
So email notifications are only sent out when using the "Limits and Validation -> Disk Quota Monitoring" function?
In general, setting up quotas will only affect how much disk space a user/server can use?
What would happen if I set a server to "Soft quota", but do not turn on the "Disk Quota Monitoring" function? I.e. what purpose does "Soft quota" serve exactly? The help page says: "Soft quotas are only advisory, and will merely generate a warning when exceeded." What does that warning look like?
Submitted by andreychek on Tue, 01/28/2014 - 10:23 Comment #3
"Limits and Validation -> Disk Quota Monitoring" is used for scheduling email notifications (you can setup how frequently it'll run there).
Without that, your users wouldn't be notified about their quota usage, they would need to be told about it somehow, or look on their own. One can manually see their quota with "quota -v" and "quota -g".
Disk quotas wouldn't do anything other than limit disk space for a user/group.
I use a hard disk quota even on my personal server, simply to make sure that a misbehaving app can't accidentally fill up the disk (it's happened!)
Soft quotas allow a user to exceed their quota for whatever the grace period is set to. After the grace period, it turns into a hard limit. Grace periods are a week by default. That can be configured in Webmin -> System -> Disk Quotas.
I don't believe Virtualmin sends out any warnings other than what are setup in the Disk Quota Monitoring screen. If notifications are setup on that screen, it would email that user and show them the percentage of usage they're using (which, if soft quotas are in effect, could be over 100%).
Submitted by Locutus on Tue, 01/28/2014 - 11:31 Comment #4
Okidoki, many thanks for the extensive explanation!