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Date:  Tue, 6 Nov 2007 21:18:59 -0500
From:  "Brian N. Smith" <brian (at mark) nuonce.net>
Subject:  [coba-e:11101] Re: erroneous user disk usage
To:  <coba-e (at mark) bluequartz.org>
Message-Id:  <006b01c820e4$8f207340$1e64a8c0 (at mark) nuonce.net>
References:  <BAY135-W3F4C3C1B49F3CA982DB6382890 (at mark) phx.gbl>
X-Mail-Count: 11101

> I've had several recent instances of people creating new users and
> then immediately finding that the user is using significant disk 
> space
> (often the full quota).  In both cases where this has happened I've
> run a find command for the user's files and haven't found anything
> other than the index.html file.

Diana,

I recently ran into this issue with a customer of mine.  What happen 
is that the Quota database file got out of wack.  The fix is simple 
enough.  The "experts" recommend booting into single user mode to do 
the fix.  Some times that isn't feasible.  Other "experts" recommend 
shutting down services that access the "/home" partition (that is 
where quotas are enabled).

I did the fix with out booting single user and with out shutting down 
services.  BUT!!!!!  The box had 10 users on it, so it took just a few 
seconds.  If you have a fair amount of users sucking up space, I 
recommend single user mode, or shutting down services.

How ever you decide to do it, this "should" fix it.

Check the user's quota first:
  repquota /home | head -n5; repquota /home | grep USERNAMEHERE

Fix the quota issue:
  quotaoff -u /home/
  quotacheck /home/ -m
  quotaon -u /home/

Verify it fixed the problem
  repquota /home | head -n5; repquota /home | grep USERNAMEHERE

That command shows the header of the repquota output so that you know 
what each column name is.

Best of luck,

Brian N. Smith
NuOnce Networks, Inc.
www.nuonce.net