Problems with edquota -p and AD users

[Techy]

Hi Everyone,

AD=Win server 2003 OD=10.5.6

The problem I am having is that when I use the edquota -p command to set quotas for the large number (1800) of students at my site it will only set quotas for the students towards the end of my file.

-p signifies that we are using a prototypical user as a template to setup the quotas for other users. protostu is the user I created specifically to be the prototypical user. I first set protostu’s quota then I tried to use him to set the other users up.

(the command below sets the quota for one user at a time and opens there settings in vi)
edquota protostu

(vi)
Quotas for user protostu:
/: 1K blocks in use: 0, limits (soft = 0, hard = 102400)
inodes in use: 0, limits (soft = 0, hard = 0)

(the command below uses your Prototypical user as a template and sets all of the following users to the same settings)
edquota -p protostu 010195F067 010195M030 010197F004 …………..

If I break the file up and only set 200 students at a time it will set the first 200 just fine but when I use the command to set the next 200 it forgets the quotas set for the first 200.

If I set the students quotas manually one by one as I have done with the teachers and the prototypical user it works great and I have had no problems as of yet. Even when I loose quotas on students that I was trying to automate with edquota -p I retain quotas on users that I set manually.

One more interesting fact is that when I check the quota of a user set with the -p flag it never shows them as having a quota set even if they are one of the lucky few that has quotas working. the only way to check a users quota if they have been set using the -p flag is to run edquota on that user and view it in the vi editor.

for example:

quota 010197F004
Disk quotas for user 010197F004 (uid 417976818): none

edquota 010197F004

Quotas for user 010197F004:
/: 1K blocks in use: 0, limits (soft = 0, hard = 102400)
inodes in use: 0, limits (soft = 0, hard = 0)

the quota command works fine on users that I have set manually through vi.

I have looked all over these forums and google and have even found a few posts with similar problems but no one seems to have a solution. I would even be willing to script edquota so it modified each user individually but I don’t think you can script vi.

Thanks in advance for any help you guys can provide.

Sincerely,
Another Desperate Admin

[Tom H]

Have you tried it without the -P on a bunch of Users ?

eg.. edquota -u 010195F067 010195M030 010197F004

I had some issues using the -p in the past which resulted in me having to remove the quota files from the root of the volume and start again with just the standard -u it allows you to set it for multiple users at once as standard..

[Techy]

Actually yes I have tried it that way but it brings up each user one at a time in vi which is unacceptable given that I have 1,800 users to set each year. Thanks for the suggestion though.

[Tom H]

Hmm i just looked tried it again with the following and it appears to work, although i only tied 5 users.

edquota -up quser user1 user2 user3 user4 user 5

Only difference is ‘-up’ as far as i can see…

[Techy]

yes I know I haven’t been using the -u flag but when I started this project I did and it made no difference to my success with the -p flag. further it seems to make no difference when doing a standard:

edquota user1

The -p flag failing is definitely a problem of scale as far as I can tell as I explained in my original post:

“If I break the file up and only set 200 students at a time it will set the first 200 just fine but when I use the command to set the next 200 it forgets the quotas set for the first 200.”

[Tom H]

Yes i understand what your saying my point is that your method is correct. B)

Do these users actually have data on the volume ? If they don’t then it wont show a quota for them until they have data in place.

Here is a quick test i did to hopefully help out with your testing.

The ingredients :

– A 2008 AD Domain
– A template user called localuser as a local account on my OSX server 10.5.6.
– 10 Test AD users to play with user1 to user10.

Firstly I copy the template users quota to my 5 Ad Users:

Last login: Sat Apr  4 20:41:05 on ttys000
sh-3.2# edquota -p localuser user1 user2 user3 user4 user5 

Then i check the quota for these 5 users (i don’t expect to see one as they have no data on the volume.

sh-3.2# quota user1 user2 user3 user4 user5
Disk quotas for user user1 (uid 1179662425): none
Disk quotas for user user2 (uid 1230151183): none
Disk quotas for user user3 (uid 1052254816): none
Disk quotas for user user4 (uid 1570249417): none
Disk quotas for user user5 (uid 1294295561): none

I then create some data on the volume that belongs to one of my AD users.

sh-3.2# cd /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD
sh-3.2# mkdir Test
sh-3.2# chown user4 Test/

Test the quotas of my users again :

sh-3.2# quota user1 user2 user3 user4 user5
Disk quotas for user user1 (uid 1179662425): none
Disk quotas for user user2 (uid 1230151183): none
Disk quotas for user user3 (uid 1052254816): none
Disk quotas for user user4 (uid 1570249417): 
     Filesystem    1K blocks         quota        limit    grace   files   quota   limit   grace
              /            0        100000       100000                1  100000  100000        
Disk quotas for user user5 (uid 1294295561): none

As you can see now user4 has some data on the volume it shows up as having a quota for that user.

A quick test to show that once the user no longer has data on the voume there quota is no longer displayed:

sh-3.2# chown user1 Test/

sh-3.2# quota user1 user2 user3 user4 user5
Disk quotas for user user1 (uid 1179662425): 
     Filesystem    1K blocks         quota        limit    grace   files   quota   limit   grace
              /            0        100000       100000                1  100000  100000        
Disk quotas for user user2 (uid 1230151183): none
Disk quotas for user user3 (uid 1052254816): none
Disk quotas for user user4 (uid 1570249417): none
Disk quotas for user user5 (uid 1294295561): none

And as you can see user 4 no longer displays a quota, but user 1 now does.

Set the quota to the rest of my users and check it doesn’t alter the above:

sh-3.2# edquota -p localuser user6 user7 user8 user9 user10 

sh-3.2# quota user1 user2 user3 user4 user5
Disk quotas for user user1 (uid 1179662425): 
     Filesystem    1K blocks         quota        limit    grace   files   quota   limit   grace
              /            0        100000       100000                1  100000  100000        
Disk quotas for user user2 (uid 1230151183): none
Disk quotas for user user3 (uid 1052254816): none
Disk quotas for user user4 (uid 1570249417): none
Disk quotas for user user5 (uid 1294295561): none

Make another test folder and assign the owner to another AD User:

sh-3.2# mkdir Test2
sh-3.2# chown user3 /Test2

Check final quotas for all 10 Ad Users:

sh-3.2# quota user1 user2 user3 user4 user5 user6 user7 user8 user9 user10
Disk quotas for user user1 (uid 1179662425): none
Disk quotas for user user2 (uid 1230151183): none
Disk quotas for user user3 (uid 1052254816): 
     Filesystem    1K blocks         quota        limit    grace   files   quota   limit   grace
              /            0        100000       100000                1  100000  100000        
Disk quotas for user user4 (uid 1570249417): none
Disk quotas for user user5 (uid 1294295561): none
Disk quotas for user user6 (uid 2086228831): none
Disk quotas for user user7 (uid 1941827040): none
Disk quotas for user user8 (uid 897668523): 
     Filesystem    1K blocks         quota        limit    grace   files   quota   limit   grace
              /            0        100000       100000                1  100000  100000        
Disk quotas for user user9 (uid 1346646431): none
Disk quotas for user user10 (uid 1243479013): none

As expected only the two users who have data on the volume show up as haveing a quota

Its also noting that Server Admin often gets the quota reporting wrapped around its head and reports all the users that have been set using the -p command with the username of the template user.

Hope this helps with your testing.

[Techy]

I appreciate all your efforts and I will be sure to test your findings after spring break as I can not access my server right now however this still does not speak to the core of my issue.

whether or not the users display a quota when I use the quota command to check is a trivial matter to me. What is far more disturbing is that after setting all 1800 students with edquota -p the vast majority don’t have quotas working. I have tested this by logging into their accounts on a WinXP machine where they have 1.73 TB available and I further test this by copying a file that should be greater than their quota to their folder.

Thank you for your continued interest and efforts!

[Tom H]

Something else thats worth mentioning..

If the users use AFP to connect to there home folders, there is a setting that as default updates the HomeDirQuota this needs to be turned off for use with AD users otherwise evertime they log in it just resets there quota to 0 . Doh!

[Techy]

Already turned that setting off. So no one has anymore ideas for me regarding my issue with edquota -p? 😥

[Techy]

Any chance that this is my problem?

Quota UID and GID ranges are more limited than FreeBSD
> otherwise limits UID/GID ranges. Make sure that “VALID_UID”
> isn’t larger than 65535 or smaller than 0.

I found several sites that have similar language in regard to quota’s. An example of my UID’s is 417976818. Clearly larger than the recommended max in the docs I found. OSX chose these UID’s automatically so any ideas on how to get it to reassign new UID’s within the desired range if this is my problem?

[Tom H]

Ok… i just rebooted the server, and guess what all my loverly quota’s have disappeared… so i recreated some quotas and tested them all worked fine again.

Rebooted and they have gone again…. I wonder if its the Apple’s Admin Tools over writing them or something similar on boot ?

sudo cat /private/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/localuser.plist

I see that the Home Folder limit is specified in the users plist :

homedirectoryquota

524288000

We could map the ID to a attribute in AD that contains a shorter number for testing that theory…

[ifbell]

I came across this thread while having my own issues with quotas. Sadly I have had no better luck but I did stumble across some interesting observations I thought I would share that might help.
If you go into /var/db/dslocal/nodes/default and find username.plist If you have not set a quota then the field homedirectoryquota does not exist. If you add it as an array and then add a sibling string and for the value you add a value in bytes it shows up in workgroup manager as having a quota. This then persists till restart when all the above go away.

I am not sure if this help but I thought the information was worth passing on.

IFB

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