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LPI Linux Certification/Maintaining A Linux File System

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Detailed Objective (203.2)

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(LPIC-2 Version 4.5)


Weight: 4


Description: Candidates should be able to properly maintain a Linux filesystem using system utilities. This objective includes manipulating standard filesystems and monitoring SMART devices.


Key Knowledge Areas:

  • Tools and utilities to manipulate ext2, ext3 and ext4
  • Tools and utilities to perform basic Btrfs operations, including subvolumes and snapshots
  • Tools and utilities to manipulate XFS
  • Awareness of ZFS


Terms and Utilities:

  • mkfs (mkfs.*)
  • mkswap
  • fsck (fsck.*)
  • tune2fs, dumpe2fs, debugfs
  • btrfs, btrfs-convert
  • xfs_info, xfs_check, xfs_repair, xfsdump and xfsrestore
  • smartd, smartctl


Formatting a partition

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Before you format a partition you need to choose the right filesystem for your needs. The most common filesystem on linux is ext3 which is a journaled filesystem based on ext2. To format a partition with a filesystem you need to use the mkfs.* commands 

 #ext3
 mkfs.ext3 /dev/hda1
 #fat
 mkfs.vfat /dev/hda1
 #xfs 
 mkfs.xfs /dev/hda1
 #reiserfs
 mkfs.reiserfs /dev/hda1

to create an ext2/ext3 filesystem you can also use the mke2fs utility 

#ext2
mke2fs /dev/hda1
#ext3
mke2fs -j /dev/hda1

Configuring and repair filesystem

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tune2fs it's an utility used to tune ext2/ext3 filesystem 

#add the journal to an ext2 filesystem(convert from ext2 to ext3)
tune2fs -j /dev/hda1
#set the max mount count before the filesystem is checked for errors to 30
tune2fs -c 30 /dev/hda1 
#set the max time before the filesystem is checked for errors to 10 days
tune2fs -i 10d /dev/hda1

you can also tune a reiserfs partition using reiserfstune 

#create a new journal for /dev/hda1 into /dev/hda2 
reiserfstune --journal-new-device /dev/hda2 -f /dev/hda1

to check a filesystem for errors you can use fsck.* 

 #ext3
 fsck.ext3 /dev/hda1
 #fat
 fsck.vfat /dev/hda1
 #xfs 
 fsck.xfs /dev/hda1
 #reiserfs
 fsck.reiserfs /dev/hda1

you can also just run fsck /dev/hda1 directly and it will detect the filesystem


Exercises

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