I need to enable disk quotas on our network file server (Samba, RedHat) to prevent the data growing too big to fit on our nightly back-up tapes.

We have 2 directories where all the shared drives are kept

/home

&

/data

After researching how to implement quotas it is recommended that /home and /data be seperate mount points/partitions as you can only enable quotas on a mount point - as well as some other good reasons. I did not originally configure our fileserver and the /home and /data directories are on the same partition as "/" and so to enable quotas I would have to enable it on the "/ "mount point - which means basically the whole disk.

I want to know if it's ok to enable quotas on "/" and if I do so will I encounter any problems?

I would recommend using separate mount points. I've never enabled quotas on "/", so I can't tell you much.

...yeah I realise separate mount points would be the way to go but it hasnt been originally configured that way so I am stuck with what I have. I dont really have the resources to repartition the drive unless its absolutely necessary - its on a production fileserver for our company with a single HDD.

Eventually the best way would be to aquire a second drive and move the /data and /home directories to individual partitions on the new drive - but for now its all under "/"

I don't if it's helpful, but you can setup user quates and they apply it to other users:

edquota -p THE_FIRST_USER `awk -F: '$3 > 499 {print $1}' /etc/passwd`

this assumes that your system gives UID from 500 (change 499 to fit your system). Of course you can setup a group quota if all your users are members of the same group.

Scary stuff there eh? Yeah, I'd pull an all nighter, backup to tape everything, then partition up the disk, put all data back from backup and live happily ever after. Short of that...

Backup the data to tape again, but instead of just chopping arbitrarily grab:
http://www.gnu.org/software/parted/
(parted) to resize. This is considered safe, but with your backups you shouldn't have to sweat nearly as much as those of us who don't have em Resize your / partition, giving the necessary space to /home and /data create the new partitions (all with parted) mount up the new mount points, and be on your mary way. That'd be what I'd do personally, but then again, my job isn't on the line sorry.

Good Luck!

Cool

...yeah repartition might be the way to go then - looks like it may be a weekend job!

Either that or I'll convince them to purchase a second drive and then copy the user/group shares across onto that into 2 fresh partitions.

Thanks for the info...