The edquota command extracts the quota information for a user from the various filesystems with quotas enabled. The edquota command creates a temporary file that contains current disk quotas of each user and group. It determines the list of file systems with established quotas from the /etc/filesystems file.

The edquota command also invokes the vi editor (or the editor specified by the EDITOR environment variable) on the temporary file so that quotas can be added and modified. It creates a temporary file and opens an editor for the user to adjust the quotas. The list of filesystems with user quotas is determined by scanning the mounted filesystems for a .quota.ops.user file located at its root.

There are two types of limits, soft and hard limits for both block and inode usage. If both block values are 0, it means no quota limit is enforced. The soft limit is the value at which a user will receive e-mail warnings about being over quota. The hard limit is the value that a user may not exceed. The important flags of edquota command are as follows:

-g Edits the quotas of one or more specified groups.
-p When invoked with the -u flag, duplicates the quotas established for a prototypical user for each specified user. When invoked with the -g flag, the -p flag duplicates the quotas established for a prototypical group for each listed group.
-t Changes the grace period during which quotas can be exceeded before a soft limit is imposed as a hard limit. The default value of the grace period is 1 week. When invoked with the -u flag, the grace period is set for all file systems with user quotas specified in the /etc/filesystems file. When invoked with the -g flag the grace period is set for all file systems with group quotas specified in the /etc/filesystems file.
-u Edits the quotas of one or more users.