How to Disable Filesystem Quotas

Last modified: February 19, 2024

Overview

Filesystem quotas allow server owners to limit the amount of disk space that an account uses. For most hosting providers, this is an integral part of how they manage cPanel accounts. However, in some circumstances, you may wish to disable filesystem quotas in order to improve your server’s performance.

The cPanel & WHM installation process enables quotas by default. You must wait until after installation to disable quotas.

You can enable quotas in WHM’s Initial Quota Setup interface (WHM » Home » Server Configuration » Initial Quota Setup) or via the /usr/local/cpanel/scripts/fixquotas script.

Disable for the root XFS filesystem

To disable filesystem quotas for the root XFS filesystem:

Use SSH to connect to your server as the root user.
Open the /etc/default/grub file and remove the following line:

`rootflags=uquota`

Save and close the file.
Run the following command to update the GRUB bootloader:

grub2-mkconfig --output=/boot/grub2/grub.cfg

Run the following command to disable quotas:

xfs_quota -x -c 'off' -c 'remove' /

Use your preferred method to reboot your server.
Run the following command to confirm your changes:

mount | grep ' / '

The output should resemble the following example:

/dev/vda1 on / type xfs (rw,relatime,attr2,inode64,noquota)

Disable for non-root XFS filesystems

To disable filesystem quotas for non-root filesystems:

Use SSH to connect to to your server as the root user.
Open the /etc/fstab file and remove the uquota entry for your mount or filesystem.
Save and close the file.
Run the following command to disable quotas:

xfs_quota -x -c 'off' -c 'remove' path_to_mount

Run the following command to remount the filesystem, where path_to_mount represents the absolute path to your mount point:

mount -o remount path_to_mount

Note:

It is not necessary to reboot the server when you disable quotas for non-root filesystems. However, you can reboot the server as an alternative to this step.