IBM General Parallel File System for AIX: Administration and Programming Reference

Recovering from over-quota conditions

Several methods of reducing file system usage are available to a user or group that has exceeded quota limits:

1. Abort the current process that caused the file system to reach its limit. Then remove surplus files to bring the limit below quota, and retry the failed program.
2. If an editor is in use, the shell escape key sequence can be used to check file space, remove surplus files, and return to the editor without losing the open file. The C and Korn shells allow the editor to be suspended with the Ctrl-Z key sequence so the file system commands can be issued. Return to the editor using the fg (foreground) command.
3. Temporarily write the file to a file system where limits have not been exceeded. Delete surplus files, then return the file to the correct file system.
4. Check that the disks containing the quota file are available. It may be necessary to run off-line quota-check (mmcheckquota) to repair or recreate the quota file. If the quota file is corrupted, the mmcheckquota command will not restore it. The file must be restored from the backup copy. If there is not a backup copy, an empty file may be set as the new quota file (this is equivalent to recreating the quota file). These files must be in the root directory of the file system. To set an empty file, issue the mmcheckquota command with the appropriate operand. Either the -u UserQuotaFilename for the user quota file or -g GroupQuotaFilename for the group quota file. Then reissue the mmcheckquota command to check the file system inode and space usage.

See the mmcheckquota Command for complete usage information.