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How do I accomplish setting up project quota for my live root folder being ext4 on Ubuntu 18.04?

Documentation specific to project quota on the ext4 filesystem is basically non-existent and I tried this:

  1. Installed Quota with apt install quota -y
  2. Put prjquota into /etc/fstab for the root / and rebooted, filesystem got booted as read-only, no project quota (from here only with prjquota instead of the user and group quotas)
  3. Also find /lib/modules/`uname -r` -type f -name '*quota_v*.ko*' was run and both kernel modules /lib/modules/4.15.0-96-generic/kernel/fs/quota/quota_v2.ko and /lib/modules/4.15.0-96-generic/kernel/fs/quota/quota_v1.ko were found (from this tutorial)
  4. Put GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="rootflags=prjquota" into /etc/default/grub, ran update-grub and rebooted, machine does not come up anymore.
  5. Putting rootflags=quota into GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="... rootflags=quota" running update-grub and restarting did show quota and usrquota being enabled on root, but it does not work with prjquota or pquota or project being set as an rootflag

I need this for the DIR storage backend of LXD to be able to limit container storage size. What else can I try?

michacassola
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    tried several things already What, specifically, was tried, and what was the response for each? Web links to the sources of what you tried would also be welcome. – K7AAY Apr 06 '20 at 22:00
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    I put the 2 major steps I took and the responses into the question – michacassola Apr 07 '20 at 11:24

1 Answers1

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I was told running tune2fs -O project -Q prjquota /dev/sdaX is absolutely essential to enable Project Quota on a device. So I searched for a solution that does not require switching off or using a live-cd as this requires too much time and does not always work well in my experience with my VPS provider. And I also hoped that I can turn the steps into a script, which did not work out so far.

Thanks to another question I was able to put together a solution that worked for me on Ubuntu 18.04. You do need ca. 4GB of RAM to do this (and of course a kernel after version 4.4).

Sources:

1. Make a RAMdisk filesystem

mkdir /tmp/tmproot
mount none /tmp/tmproot -t tmpfs -o rw
mkdir /tmp/tmproot/{proc,oldroot,sys}
cp -a /dev /tmp/tmproot/dev
cp -ax /{bin,etc,opt,run,usr,home,mnt,sbin,lib,lib64,var,root,srv} /tmp/tmproot/

2. Switch root to the new RAMdisk filesystem

cd /tmp/tmproot
unshare -m
pivot_root /tmp/tmproot/ /tmp/tmproot/oldroot
mount none /proc -t proc
mount none /sys -t sysfs
mount none /dev/pts -t devpts

3. Restart SSH on another port than 22 and reconnect with another session

nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

  • Change the port to 2211

  • Restart SSH with /usr/sbin/sshd -D &

  • Connect again from 2211

4. Kill processes using /oldroot or /dev/sdaX

fuser -km /oldroot
fuser -km /dev/sdaX

5. Unmount /dev/sdaX and apply the project quota feature

umount -l /dev/sdaX
tune2fs -O project -Q prjquota /dev/sdaX

6. Mount with Project Quota

mount /dev/sda2 -o prjquota /oldroot

7. Putting things back

pivot_root /oldroot /oldroot/tmp/tmproot
umount /tmp/tmproot/proc
mount none /proc -t proc
cp -ax /tmp/tmproot/dev/* /dev/
mount /dev/sda1 /boot  ### This might be different for you
reboot -f

8. Turn quota on after reboot

apt install quota -y
quotaon -Pv -F vfsv1 /

9. Check if quota is on on root

repquota -Ps /

10. Make it persistent

  • Put prjquota into the options of root in /etc/fstab

Enjoy!

michacassola
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