Security Strategies in Linux Platforms and Applications, 3rd Edition

Configuring and Implementing Quotas on a Filesystem

Quotas can limit the resources taken by a user or by a group of users. When appropriate, quotas are enabled. Limits are configured on the amount of space based on blocks and on the number of files based on inodes. (An inode is a data structure associated with a file.) Quotas can protect the space available on critical directories. Quotas can give you time if there’s a legitimate reason to expand the space allocated to a directory such as 
/home/. Quotas can help limit the damage if one of the accounts on your system has been compromised.

Poorly configured logs or message systems can create huge numbers of files. For example, systems configured in debug mode create logs for every event. Systems ...