Increase Web Server Quota (Upload Errors)

Expected behaviour

Uploading a file, anywhere in the folder structure, by any user.

Actual behaviour

Error when uploading: says files is grater than amount fo space available
User set to unlimited quota
Error on Settings page:
You are using 5 GB of 5 GB (99.98 %)

Server configuration

Operating system: LAMP
Web server: WHM / cPanel
Database: my SQL
PHP version: PHP 7.4 (ea-php74)
ownCloud version: 10.11.0
Updated from an older ownCloud or fresh install: Fresh
Where did you install ownCloud from: Softaculous

List of activated apps: NONE

Are you using external storage, if yes which one: NO

As per suggestions elsewhere, I upped PHP.INI Settings to:
memory_limit 16G
post_max_size 16G
upload_max_filesize 16G

It had no effect.
I have NO IDEA why the limit for the whole system is 5 GB, or where to change it.

It shouldn’t be that fricken hard…

It isn’t that hard. I have no idea why you are futzing around in the PHP config files in your server. User storage quotas are configured by the ownCloud administrator in the user settings.

See the admin docs for more details.

Sorry, you misunderstood the issue and missed the details. I’m talking about the overall cloud storage limit, which is why I said any user uploading anywhere. As I wrote, the users experiencing the problem are already set to UNLIMITED.

Unless you can show me a setting for that I missed, I stand by my statement that it shouldn’t be so hard. It shouldn’t be a problem at all. Yet here we are …

I actually asked AI and I had the datacenter implement it, successfully solving the problem:


Given that we’ve confirmed there’s plenty of free space on the partition and the web server account has adequate permissions, this points to a more subtle issue with how ownCloud is calculating and reporting available disk space. This can sometimes happen with older versions of ownCloud or due to a combination of configuration and database issues.

Here are some advanced troubleshooting steps to track down the source of this problem:

  1. The files:scan Command
    The ownCloud file system is managed by its database. Sometimes, the database’s information about file sizes and free space can become out of sync with the actual file system. Running a scan can force a recalculation.

Access your server via SSH.

Navigate to the ownCloud installation directory.

Run the following command:

sudo -u www-data php occ files:scan --all
(Note: Replace www-data with the actual user your web server runs as, e.g., apache, nginx, etc.)

This command will rescan all files and folders for all users and update the database. It can take a while to complete if you have a large number of files.

  1. Check the config.php for Mismatched Paths
    Even if you’ve checked the basic datadirectory setting, there could be other configuration issues.

Open your config/config.php file.

Look for any entries that might be related to storage paths or sizes.

Double-check the ‘datadirectory’ entry. Is the path exactly correct and does it point to the root of your large partition? A small typo or an incorrect path can cause ownCloud to look at the wrong disk.

Look for any quota or default_quota entries that might be hard-coded. While you said user quotas are unlimited, a misconfiguration in this file could be overriding that.

  1. Clear the Cache
    A corrupt cache could be causing ownCloud to use outdated information about disk space.

Access your server via SSH.

Navigate to the ownCloud installation directory.

Clear the ownCloud cache:

sudo -u www-data php occ maintenance:mode --on
sudo rm -rf data/appdata_*
sudo -u www-data php occ maintenance:mode --off
(Again, replace www-data with your web server user.)

This will put ownCloud into maintenance mode, clear the cache, and then bring it back online.