Differences between revisions 1 and 4 (spanning 3 versions)

Quota

There are different quota backends that Dovecot can use:

[wiki:Quota/FS fs]: Filesystem quota.
[wiki:Quota/Dirsize dirsize]: The simplest, but sometimes slow, quota backend. It scans all the files from mail directories to calculate the quota.
[wiki:Quota/Dict dict]: Store quota in a dictionary (table).
[wiki:Quota/Maildir maildir]: Maildir++ quota.

The quota backends are implemented as plugins for Dovecot. There is also a plugin named "quota" which does the actual work. For reporting quota information via IMAP, there is the "imap_quota" plugin. Usually you'd enable these by adding them to the mail_plugins settings in config file:

protocol imap {
  mail_plugins = quota imap_quota
}
protocol pop3 {
  mail_plugins = quota
}
# In case you're using Dovecot-LDA:
protocol lda {
  mail_plugins = quota
}

Most of the quota backends have a few things in common:

You can set the quota as kilobytes (named storage) and/or as number of messages (named messages). Usually only the storage quota is used. Usually these limits can be given to the quota backend as parameters, e.g.:

plugin {
  # 10 MB quota limit
  quota = maildir:storage=10240
  # 1000 messages quota limit
  quota = maildir:messages=1000
  # 10 MB + 1000 messages quota limit
  quota = maildir:storage=10240:messages=1000
}

The above example shows how to set the same quota globally for everyone. You can override this for one or all users by returning a quota field from the user database. See UserDatabase for more information about how to set them for the user database you are using. Here is an example using a SQL-based user database:

user_query = SELECT home, uid, gid, 'dirsize:storage=' || quota_bytes AS quota FROM users WHERE userid = '%u'

With LDAP, use something like:

# quotaStorage must be in the format mentioned above
# For example: dirsize:storage=10240
user_attrs = uid,homeDirectory,,,uidNumber,gidNumber,quotaStorage=quota

# If you have the quota already as kilobytes in LDAP, there's a kludgy way to use it directly:
user_attrs = uid,homeDirectory,,,uidNumber,gidNumber,quotaStorage=quota=dirsize:storage

-  ⇤ ← Revision 1 as of 2005-10-28 15:35:03 → 
  Size: 1159
  Editor: TimoSirainen
  Comment:
+   ← Revision 4 as of 2006-06-13 15:27:38 → ⇥
  Size: 2229
  Editor: MatthiasAndree
  Comment: minor linguistic improvements
-Deletions are marked like this.
+Additions are marked like this.
 Line 1:
-== Filesystem quota ==
+= Quota =
 Line 3:
-Dovecot doesn't work too well with filesystem quota currently. But there are a few things you can do:
+There are different quota backends that Dovecot can use:
 Line 5:
- * Set index file location to some partition where there are no quota limits. Dovecot can't currently handle out-of-quota error conditions when updating indexes.
 * mbox should work somewhat nicely as long as `mbox_lazy_writes=yes` in config file. Although if user doesn't delete any mails when closing the mailbox, Dovecot gives an "internal error".
 * Maildir also needs to update `dovecot-uidlist` file, which can't handle out-of-quota errors. Its location can be set using "CONTROL" parameter in default_mail_env.
+ * [wiki:Quota/FS fs]: Filesystem quota.
 * [wiki:Quota/Dirsize dirsize]: The simplest, but sometimes slow, quota backend. It scans all the files from mail directories to calculate the quota.
 * [wiki:Quota/Dict dict]: Store quota in a dictionary (table).
 * [wiki:Quota/Maildir maildir]: Maildir++ quota.
-Line 9:
+Line 10:
-So, use something like:
+The quota backends are implemented as plugins for Dovecot. There is also a plugin named "quota" which does the actual work. For reporting quota information via IMAP, there is the "imap_quota" plugin. Usually you'd enable these by adding them to the `mail_plugins` settings in config file:
-Line 12:
+Line 13:
-# mbox:
default_mail_env = mbox:%h/mail:INBOX=/var/mail/%u:INDEX=/var/no-quotas/index/%u
+protocol imap {
  mail_plugins = quota imap_quota
}
protocol pop3 {
  mail_plugins = quota
}
# In case you're using Dovecot-LDA:
protocol lda {
  mail_plugins = quota
} }}}
-Line 15:
+Line 24:
-# maildir:
default_mail_env = maildir:%h/Maildir:INDEX=/var/no-quotas/index/%u:CONTROL=/var/no-quotas/control/%u
}}}
+Most of the quota backends have a few things in common:
-Line 19:
+Line 26:
-== Software quotas ==
+You can set the quota as kilobytes (named '''storage''') and/or as number of messages (named '''messages'''). Usually only the '''storage''' quota is used. Usually these limits can be given to the quota backend as parameters, e.g.:
-Line 21:
+Line 28:
-Dovecot 1.0 supports quota using a quota plugin. It's currently discussed in [wiki:LDA Dovecot LDA] page and it supports only very simple quota calculation which is suitable only for mboxes. Maildir++ quota support will come later.
+{{{
plugin {
  # 10 MB quota limit
  quota = maildir:storage=10240
  # 1000 messages quota limit
  quota = maildir:messages=1000
  # 10 MB + 1000 messages quota limit
  quota = maildir:storage=10240:messages=1000
} }}}

The above example shows how to set the same quota globally for everyone. You can override this for one or all users by returning a `quota` field from the user database. See UserDatabase for more information about how to set them for the user database you are using. Here is an example using a SQL-based user database:

{{{
user_query = SELECT home, uid, gid, 'dirsize:storage=' || quota_bytes AS quota FROM users WHERE userid = '%u' }}}

With LDAP, use something like:

{{{
# quotaStorage must be in the format mentioned above
# For example: dirsize:storage=10240
user_attrs = uid,homeDirectory,,,uidNumber,gidNumber,quotaStorage=quota

# If you have the quota already as kilobytes in LDAP, there's a kludgy way to use it directly:
user_attrs = uid,homeDirectory,,,uidNumber,gidNumber,quotaStorage=quota=dirsize:storage }}}