LPI-GUN-101 FROM LINUXIT

jarodwen

Study Guide for



















Linux System Administration 1




Lab work for LPI 101 (RPM)






















released under the GFDL by LinuxIT

























        Copyright (c)  2003 LinuxIT.
      Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
      under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2
      or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation;
      with the Invariant Sections being History, Acknowledgements, with the                 Front-Cover Texts being “released under the GFDL by LinuxIT”.
GNU Free Documentation License

Version 1.2, November 2002

Copyright (C) 2000,2001,2002  Free Software Foundation, Inc.
59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  USA
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
0. PREAMBLE

The purpose of this License is to make a manual, textbook, or other functional and useful document "free" in the sense of freedom: to assure everyone the effective freedom to copy and redistribute it, with or without modifying it, either commercially or noncommercially. Secondarily, this License preserves for the author and publisher a way to get credit for their work, while not being considered responsible for modifications made by others.

This License is a kind of "copyleft", which means that derivative works of the document must themselves be free in the same sense. It complements the GNU General Public License, which is a copyleft license designed for free software.

We have designed this License in order to use it for manuals for free software, because free software needs free documentation: a free program should come with manuals providing the same freedoms that the software does. But this License is not limited to software manuals; it can be used for any textual work, regardless of subject matter or whether it is published as a printed book. We recommend this License principally for works whose purpose is instruction or reference.

1. APPLICABILITY AND DEFINITIONS

This License applies to any manual or other work, in any medium, that contains a notice placed by the copyright holder saying it can be distributed under the terms of this License. Such a notice grants a world-wide, royalty-free license, unlimited in duration, to use that work under the conditions stated herein. The "Document", below, refers to any such manual or work. Any member of the public is a licensee, and is addressed as "you". You accept the license if you copy, modify or distribute the work in a way requiring permission under copyright law.

A "Modified Version" of the Document means any work containing the Document or a portion of it, either copied verbatim, or with modifications and/or translated into another language.

A "Secondary Section" is a named appendix or a front-matter section of the Document that deals exclusively with the relationship of the publishers or authors of the Document to the Document's overall subject (or to related matters) and contains nothing that could fall directly within that overall subject. (Thus, if the Document is in part a textbook of mathematics, a Secondary Section may not explain any mathematics.) The relationship could be a matter of historical connection with the subject or with related matters, or of legal, commercial, philosophical, ethical or political position regarding them.

The "Invariant Sections" are certain Secondary Sections whose titles are designated, as being those of Invariant Sections, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. If a section does not fit the above definition of Secondary then it is not allowed to be designated as Invariant. The Document may contain zero Invariant Sections. If the Document does not identify any Invariant Sections then there are none.

The "Cover Texts" are certain short passages of text that are listed, as Front-Cover Texts or Back-Cover Texts, in the notice that says that the Document is released under this License. A Front-Cover Text may be at most 5 words, and a Back-Cover Text may be at most 25 words.

A "Transparent" copy of the Document means a machine-readable copy, represented in a format whose specification is available to the general public, that is suitable for revising the document straightforwardly with generic text editors or (for images composed of pixels) generic paint programs or (for drawings) some widely available drawing editor, and that is suitable for input to text formatters or for automatic translation to a variety of formats suitable for input to text formatters. A copy made in an otherwise Transparent file format whose markup, or absence of markup, has been arranged to thwart or discourage subsequent modification by readers is not Transparent. An image format is not Transparent if used for any substantial amount of text. A copy that is not "Transparent" is called "Opaque".

Examples of suitable formats for Transparent copies include plain ASCII without markup, Texinfo input format, LaTeX input format, SGML or XML using a publicly available DTD, and standard-conforming simple HTML, PostScript or PDF designed for human modification. Examples of transparent image formats include PNG, XCF and JPG. Opaque formats include proprietary formats that can be read and edited only by proprietary word processors, SGML or XML for which the DTD and/or processing tools are not generally available, and the machine-generated HTML, PostScript or PDF produced by some word processors for output purposes only.

The "Title Page" means, for a printed book, the title page itself, plus such following pages as are needed to hold, legibly, the material this License requires to appear in the title page. For works in formats which do not have any title page as such, "Title Page" means the text near the most prominent appearance of the work's title, preceding the beginning of the body of the text.

A section "Entitled XYZ" means a named subunit of the Document whose title either is precisely XYZ or contains XYZ in parentheses following text that translates XYZ in another language. (Here XYZ stands for a specific section name mentioned below, such as "Acknowledgements", "Dedications", "Endorsements", or "History".) To "Preserve the Title" of such a section when you modify the Document means that it remains a section "Entitled XYZ" according to this definition.

The Document may include Warranty Disclaimers next to the notice which states that this License applies to the Document. These Warranty Disclaimers are considered to be included by reference in this License, but only as regards disclaiming warranties: any other implication that these Warranty Disclaimers may have is void and has no effect on the meaning of this License.

2. VERBATIM COPYING

You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3.

You may also lend copies, under the same conditions stated above, and you may publicly display copies.

3. COPYING IN QUANTITY

If you publish printed copies (or copies in media that commonly have printed covers) of the Document, numbering more than 100, and the Document's license notice requires Cover Texts, you must enclose the copies in covers that carry, clearly and legibly, all these Cover Texts: Front-Cover Texts on the front cover, and Back-Cover Texts on the back cover. Both covers must also clearly and legibly identify you as the publisher of these copies. The front cover must present the full title with all words of the title equally prominent and visible. You may add other material on the covers in addition. Copying with changes limited to the covers, as long as they preserve the title of the Document and satisfy these conditions, can be treated as verbatim copying in other respects.

If the required texts for either cover are too voluminous to fit legibly, you should put the first ones listed (as many as fit reasonably) on the actual cover, and continue the rest onto adjacent pages.

If you publish or distribute Opaque copies of the Document numbering more than 100, you must either include a machine-readable Transparent copy along with each Opaque copy, or state in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from which the general network-using public has access to download using public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the Document, free of added material. If you use the latter option, you must take reasonably prudent steps, when you begin distribution of Opaque copies in quantity, to ensure that this Transparent copy will remain thus accessible at the stated location until at least one year after the last time you distribute an Opaque copy (directly or through your agents or retailers) of that edition to the public.

It is requested, but not required, that you contact the authors of the Document well before redistributing any large number of copies, to give them a chance to provide you with an updated version of the Document.

4. MODIFICATIONS

You may copy and distribute a Modified Version of the Document under the conditions of sections 2 and 3 above, provided that you release the Modified Version under precisely this License, with the Modified Version filling the role of the Document, thus licensing distribution and modification of the Modified Version to whoever possesses a copy of it. In addition, you must do these things in the Modified Version:

A. Use in the Title Page (and on the covers, if any) a title distinct from that of the Document, and from those of previous versions (which should, if there were any, be listed in the History section of the Document). You may use the same title as a previous version if the original publisher of that version gives permission.

B. List on the Title Page, as authors, one or more persons or entities responsible for authorship of the modifications in the Modified Version, together with at least five of the principal authors of the Document (all of its principal authors, if it has fewer than five), unless they release you from this requirement.

C. State on the Title page the name of the publisher of the Modified Version, as the publisher.

D. Preserve all the copyright notices of the Document.

E. Add an appropriate copyright notice for your modifications adjacent to the other copyright notices.

F. Include, immediately after the copyright notices, a license notice giving the public permission to use the Modified Version under the terms of this License, in the form shown in the Addendum below.

G. Preserve in that license notice the full lists of Invariant Sections and required Cover Texts given in the Document's license notice.

H. Include an unaltered copy of this License.

I. Preserve the section Entitled "History", Preserve its Title, and add to it an item stating at least the title, year, new authors, and publisher of the Modified Version as given on the Title Page. If there is no section Entitled "History" in the Document, create one stating the title, year, authors, and publisher of the Document as given on its Title Page, then add an item describing the Modified Version as stated in the previous sentence.

J. Preserve the network location, if any, given in the Document for public access to a Transparent copy of the Document, and likewise the network locations given in the Document for previous versions it was based on. These may be placed in the "History" section. You may omit a network location for a work that was published at least four years before the Document itself, or if the original publisher of the version it refers to gives permission.

K. For any section Entitled "Acknowledgements" or "Dedications", Preserve the Title of the section, and preserve in the section all the substance and tone of each of the contributor acknowledgements and/or dedications given therein.

L. Preserve all the Invariant Sections of the Document, unaltered in their text and in their titles. Section numbers or the equivalent are not considered part of the section titles.

M. Delete any section Entitled "Endorsements". Such a section may not be included in the Modified Version.

N. Do not retitle any existing section to be Entitled "Endorsements" or to conflict in title with any Invariant Section.

O. Preserve any Warranty Disclaimers.

If the Modified Version includes new front-matter sections or appendices that qualify as Secondary Sections and contain no material copied from the Document, you may at your option designate some or all of these sections as invariant. To do this, add their titles to the list of Invariant Sections in the Modified Version's license notice. These titles must be distinct from any other section titles.

You may add a section Entitled "Endorsements", provided it contains nothing but endorsements of your Modified Version by various parties--for example, statements of peer review or that the text has been approved by an organization as the authoritative definition of a standard.

You may add a passage of up to five words as a Front-Cover Text, and a passage of up to 25 words as a Back-Cover Text, to the end of the list of Cover Texts in the Modified Version. Only one passage of Front-Cover Text and one of Back-Cover Text may be added by (or through arrangements made by) any one entity. If the Document already includes a cover text for the same cover, previously added by you or by arrangement made by the same entity you are acting on behalf of, you may not add another; but you may replace the old one, on explicit permission from the previous publisher that added the old one.

The author(s) and publisher(s) of the Document do not by this License give permission to use their names for publicity for or to assert or imply endorsement of any Modified Version.

5. COMBINING DOCUMENTS

You may combine the Document with other documents released under this License, under the terms defined in section 4 above for modified versions, provided that you include in the combination all of the Invariant Sections of all of the original documents, unmodified, and list them all as Invariant Sections of your combined work in its license notice, and that you preserve all their Warranty Disclaimers.

The combined work need only contain one copy of this License, and multiple identical Invariant Sections may be replaced with a single copy. If there are multiple Invariant Sections with the same name but different contents, make the title of each such section unique by adding at the end of it, in parentheses, the name of the original author or publisher of that section if known, or else a unique number. Make the same adjustment to the section titles in the list of Invariant Sections in the license notice of the combined work.

In the combination, you must combine any sections Entitled "History" in the various original documents, forming one section Entitled "History"; likewise combine any sections Entitled "Acknowledgements", and any sections Entitled "Dedications". You must delete all sections Entitled "Endorsements."

6. COLLECTIONS OF DOCUMENTS

You may make a collection consisting of the Document and other documents released under this License, and replace the individual copies of this License in the various documents with a single copy that is included in the collection, provided that you follow the rules of this License for verbatim copying of each of the documents in all other respects.

You may extract a single document from such a collection, and distribute it individually under this License, provided you insert a copy of this License into the extracted document, and follow this License in all other respects regarding verbatim copying of that document.

7. AGGREGATION WITH INDEPENDENT WORKS

A compilation of the Document or its derivatives with other separate and independent documents or works, in or on a volume of a storage or distribution medium, is called an "aggregate" if the copyright resulting from the compilation is not used to limit the legal rights of the compilation's users beyond what the individual works permit. When the Document is included in an aggregate, this License does not apply to the other works in the aggregate which are not themselves derivative works of the Document.

If the Cover Text requirement of section 3 is applicable to these copies of the Document, then if the Document is less than one half of the entire aggregate, the Document's Cover Texts may be placed on covers that bracket the Document within the aggregate, or the electronic equivalent of covers if the Document is in electronic form. Otherwise they must appear on printed covers that bracket the whole aggregate.

8. TRANSLATION

Translation is considered a kind of modification, so you may distribute translations of the Document under the terms of section 4. Replacing Invariant Sections with translations requires special permission from their copyright holders, but you may include translations of some or all Invariant Sections in addition to the original versions of these Invariant Sections. You may include a translation of this License, and all the license notices in the Document, and any Warranty Disclaimers, provided that you also include the original English version of this License and the original versions of those notices and disclaimers. In case of a disagreement between the translation and the original version of this License or a notice or disclaimer, the original version will prevail.

If a section in the Document is Entitled "Acknowledgements", "Dedications", or "History", the requirement (section 4) to Preserve its Title (section 1) will typically require changing the actual title.

9. TERMINATION

You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Document except as expressly provided for under this License. Any other attempt to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Document is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.

10. FUTURE REVISIONS OF THIS LICENSE

The Free Software Foundation may publish new, revised versions of the GNU Free Documentation License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns. See http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/.

Each version of the License is given a distinguishing version number. If the Document specifies that a particular numbered version of this License "or any later version" applies to it, you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that specified version or of any later version that has been published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation. If the Document does not specify a version number of this License, you may choose any version ever published (not as a draft) by the Free Software Foundation.








Introduction:
Acknowledgments
The original material was made available by LinuxIT's technical training centre www.linuxit.com. Many thanks to Andrew Meredith for suggesting the idea in the first place. A special thanks to all the students who have helped dilute the technical aspects of Linux administration through their many questions, this has led to the inclusion of more illustrations attempting to introduce concepts in a userfriendly way. Finally, many thanks to Paul McEnery for the technical advice and for starting off some of the most difficult chapters such as the ones covering the X server (101), modems (102) and the Linux kernel (102).




The manual is available online at http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/lpi-manuals/. Thank you to the Savannah Volunteers for assessing the project and providing us with the Web space.




History
First release (version 0.0) October 2003. Reviewed by Adrian Thomasset.

Audience
This course is designed as a 3 to 4 days practical course preparing for the LPI 101 exam. It is recommended that candidates have at least one year experience doing Linux administration professionally. However for those who are ready for a challenge the training is designed to provide as much insight and examples as possible to help non specialists understand the basic concepts and command sets which form the core of Linux computing.




The LPI Certification Program
There are currently two LPI certification levels. The first level LPIC-1 is granted after passing both exams LPI 101 and LPI 102. Similarly passing the LPI 201 and LPI 202 exams will grant the second level certification LPIC-2.




There are no pre-requisites for LPI 101 and 102. However the exams for LPIC-2 can only be attempted once LPIC-1 has been obtained.


Instructor Notice
There are no instructor notes with this manual. The following issues must be considered.

The installation exercises suggest a network installation (prepare floppies + installation server).

The exercises in the device and filesystem sections both assume that a new partition can be created. Make sure during the installation that a large extended partition with at least 100MB free space is available after all the partitions have been created.

The following RPM packages are needed for the exercises:

rpm-build

sharutils

No Guarantee
The manual comes with no guarantee at all.




Resources
www.lpi.org

www.linux-praxis.de

www.lpiforums.com

www.tldp.org

www.fsf.org

www.linuxit.com




Notations
Commands and filenames will appear in the text in bold.




The <> symbols are used to indicate a non optional argument.

The [] symbols are used to indicate an optional argument




Commands that can be typed directly in the shell are highlighted as below







command





or




command









Introduction: 6

Acknowledgments 6

History 6


Installation 10

1. The Installation CD 10

2. Local Installations 11

3. Network Installation 11

4. Rescue disk 11

5. Partitioning Schemes 13

6. Easy Dual Booting 13

8. Exercises 15




Hardware Configuration 16

1. Memory Support 16

2. Resource Allocation 16

3. USB Support 17

4. SCSI Devices 18

5. Network cards 18

6. Setting up modems 19

7. Printer Configuration 20

8. Exercises 22




Managing Devices 23

1. Disks and Partitions 23

2. Partitioning Tools: 25

3. Bootloaders 27

4. Managed devices 28

5. Quotas 29

6. Exercises 31




The Linux Filesystem 32

1. The Filesystem Structure 32

2. Formatting and File System Consistency 33

3. Monitoring Disk Usage 35

4. File Permissions 36

5. Exercises 39




The Command Line 41

1. The interactive shell 41

2. Variables 42

3. Input, Output, Redirection 43

4. Metacharacters and Quotes 45

5. The Command History 47

6. Other Commands 47

7. Exercise 49




File Management 52

1. Moving around the filesystem 52

2. Finding Files and Directories 52

3. Handling directories 54


4. Using cp and mv 54

5. Hard Links and Symbolic Links 55

7. Touching and dd-ing 56

8. Exercises 58







Process Management 60

1. Viewing running processes 60

2. Modifying Processes 61

3. Processes and the shell 63

4. Exercises 65




Text Processing 66

1. cat the Swiss Army Knife 66

2. Simple tools 67

3. Manipulating text 68

4. Exercises 70




Software Installation 71

1. Introduction 71

2. Static and Shared Libraries 72

3. Source Distribution Installation 74

4. The RedHat Package Manager RPM 75

5. The Alien Tool 78

6. Exercises 79




Advanced Text Manipulation 80

1. Regular Expressions 80

2. The grep family 80

3. Working with grep 81

4. egrep and fgrep 81

5. The Stream Editor - sed 81

6. Exercises 84




Using vi 85

1. vi Modes 85

2. Text Items 85

3. Inserting Text 86

4. Deleting Text 86

5. Copy Pasting 86

6. Searching 87

7. Undoing 87

8. Saving 87

9. Exercises 88




The X Environment 89

1. Introduction 89

3. Configuring X11R6 90

4. Controlling X clients 92

5. Starting X 92

6. The Display Manager 93

7. Troubleshooting X Clients 96

8. Choosing a Window Manager 96

9. Exercises 97

Installation



Rather than discuss a step by step installation we will introduce in this module the installation CD, the different installation methods and the “rescue mode”.




1. The Installation CD



The various Linux distributions have different names for the directories on the installation CD. The generic structure of the CDROM is as follows:




Generic Installation CD layout























packages: This directory contains the precompiled packages. Here are the associated names for the main distrubutions:

debian: dist

mandrake: Mandrake

redhat: RedHat

suse: suse







images: This directory contains various “images”. These are special flat files often containing directory structures. An initial ramdisk (initrd) is an example of an image file. There are different types of images necessary to:




- boot the installation process

- provide additional kernel modules

- rescue the system




Some of these files can be copied to a floppy disk when the installation is started using floppies rather than the CDROM. The Linux tool used to do this is dd. There is a tool called rawritewhich does the same under DOS.




The image is a special file which may contain subdirectories (much like an archive file).




Image file structure





Image file












An image file can be mounted on a loop device. If the image file name is called Image then the following command will allow one to view the content of this file in the /mnt/floppy directory:




mount -o loop /path/to/Image /mnt/floppy




dosutils: this directory contains DOS tools which may be used to prepare a Linux installation such as the

rawrite.exe tool mentioned above. Another tool is the fips utility which non destructively partions a C:\ drive in two provided the underlying filesystem type is FAT and not NTFS.




2. Local Installations



The easiest and most common type of installation is a local installation. Most distributions are a CD iso image with an automatic installation script. On machines with no CD-ROM hardware it is still possible to start an installation from a floppy.







CD-ROM installation




Change the settings in the BIOS for the computer to boot from CD. The installation is menu driven and allows for advanced and basic configuration.







Floppy Installation




If for some reason you don't boot using the CD-ROM you will need to create a floppy installation image. This can happen if the CD is not bootable or you have downloaded a non-iso image of the distribution.




Making a bootable installation disk



dd if=/path/to/<image_name> of=/dev/fd0
on a linux box

rawrite.exe
under Windows (not NT)





For RedHat distributions the installation images are in the images directory. The basic image is boot.img. Other images are more specialised like bootnet.img or pcmcia.img.

In a Suse distribution the floppy image is in the disks directory and the image is called bootdisk.







3. Network Installation



For a RedHat installation this is only a specialised floppy installation. Make a bootable floppy using the bootnet.img image:





dd /mnt/cdrom/images/bootnet.img of=/dev/fdo








The installation is text based and will allow you to setup the network parameters needed. The rest of the installation can be done via FTP, NFS or HTTP.







4. Rescue disk



If a Linux system is corrupt it is possible to boot the computer using a rescue disk. This is a small version of Linux that will mount a minimal virtual filesystem into memory.




The Linux operating system runs entirely in RAM. The aim is to access the root filesystem on the PC hard drive. Most rescue disks can determine this automatically. Assuming the root filesystem was found on the first logical partion of the computer's first IDE disk (/dev/hda5), the rescue disk script can then mount this resource on a subdirectoty of the filesystem in RAM, say /mnt/system.










Changing perspectives




In this situation we have two root filesystems as depected below. To use the root filesystem on the hard drive as our top directory we need to change our perspective (change root). The chroot tool does just that:




chroot /mnt/system







Rescue mode



RAM kernel

initrd







root filesystem in RAM root filesystem on PC hard drive











Getting started







Old Method:




Make a bootable floppy using the boot.img image file: dd if=boot.img of=/dev/fd0

Copy the rescue.img image file to a second floppy: dd if=rescue.img of=/dev/fd0

Boot the system using with the boot.img diskette

At the LILO prompt type "linux rescue". You should see something like




Insert root file system disk:




Insert the rescue.img diskette and press enter

The boot process will continue until you get a shell prompt

You may still need to determine where the root filesystem is on the hard drive










New Method:




1. Insert the Linux installation disk (Suse, RedHat, Mandrake ...)

2. At the prompt type “linux rescue”

3. Follow the instructions.

4. The instuction should say where the root filesystem is mounted

5. If the root filesystem is mounted on /mnt/sysimage then enter the following command





chroot /mnt/sysimage

















5. Partitioning Schemes



The figure below shows a possible partitioning scheme. The File System layout is a tree of directories and subdirectories. The physical resources with the data are mounted at specific locations on the file system called mount points.




The root of the tree structure is called root and is represented by a forward slash “/”. At boot time, the boot loader is told which device to mount at root. The leaves in this tree structure are subdirectories.




During installation you will partition the hard drive and assign a size and a mount point for each partition.




Fig 2: Mount points on the file system








6. Easy Dual Booting



(This section is not for exam purpous).




If Windows9x/2k is already installed on the system the installation setup will automatically configure LILO for dual booting.







Pre-installation:




Before altering the system you should run a defragmentation program over the whole disk. This will make sure that all the blocks used by Windows are rearranged at the beginning of the disk.




Next, using PartitionMagic or fips, partition the C:\ drive in two. The Windows programs are located at the beginning and the second half must be large enough to hold a Linux installation.




Notice: The average amount of space needed for a recent Linux distribution is 1GB.













Starting the installation from DOS:




For non-NT systems restart your computer in DOS command mode. If you are installing RedHat then you can run E:\DOSUTILS\AUTOBOOT.BAT. This will start the installation program. Similarly if you are installing Suse you can run E:\setup.exe under DOS.







The hard drive from a Windows' perspective:




When running Windows the OS will only see the C:\ drive. The rest of the disk where Linux is installed will be inaccessible.







The hard drive from a Linux point of view:




When running Linux the Windows partition should be called /dev/hda1 (since it's the first partition on the first physical disk). By default this partition is not mounted. You can make a directory /dos or /mnt/dos and mount this partition. The disk partition corresponding to C:\ is then accessible.








8. Exercises



1. Do a network installation using the ready prepared bootnet.img floppy disk.




(i) Choose “Custom System” installation




(ii) Partition the disk with Disk Druid:




This is a suggestion for a partitioning scheme using about 3GB of hard disk space. If you have more space available then make /usr larger and consider installing more packages than those suggested in step (iv)




IMPORTANT: Leave a free partition of at least 100MB. We will need this later!!




/boot 20M

/ 250M

/usr 2300M

/home 50M

/tmp 100M

/var 150M

SWAP 128M (Notice that SWAP is a filesystem type and that no mount point is defined)




(iii) Install LILO on /dev/hda2 or /dev/hda3. In all cases do not use the suggested /dev/hda, which is the MBR.

We deliberately don't want the installation to boot properly. The bootloader will be fixed in step 2(i) in rescue mode.




(iv) Packages to install: (the names may vary from one distribution to another)




“Network Support”

“Classic X Window System”

“X Window System”

“Software Development” [This is important, we will need this to compile packages later]




(v) Don’t create a bootable floppy




2. Rescue the system:




(i) Reboot with the bootnet.img floppy disk (or the installation CDROM of you have it). This time type

linux rescue

at the prompt.




(ii) Read all the instructions until you get to a prompt. Use the chroot command as suggested.




(iii) Edit /etc/lilo.conf (use vi). You should have

boot=/dev/fd0

prompt

linear

timeout=50

image=/boot/vmlinuz-<kernel-version>

label=linux

read-only

root=/dev/<root-partition>




(v) Run /sbin/lilo. If an error occurs you may have to replace linear by lba32 depending on your disk.

Hardware Configuration



1. Memory Support



The system’s RAM is first detected by the BIOS. All types of RAM (EDO, DRAM and SDRAM) are recognised by the Linux kernel. There can be problems with old hardware when the BIOS cannot detect 64MB of RAM or more. In this case one needs to passe parameters to the kernel at boot time.




When using LILO insert the following into /etc/lilo.conf:




append=”mem=<amount of ram>M”




Remember to run /sbin/lilo.




If you are using GRUB add the following to /etc/grub.conf on the line beginning with kernel :




kernel vmlinuz mem=<amount of ram>M




2. Resource Allocation



To allow peripherals and devices on the PC to communicate directly with system resources, in particular the CPU, the system allocates resources such as lines and channels for each device. These resources are Interrupt Request Lines (IRQ), Input/Output addresses and Direct Memory Access channels (DMA).




IRQs: The Interrupt Request Lines allow devices to request CPU time. The CPU will stop its current activity and process the instructions sent by the device. IRQs range from 0 to 15.




I/O address: These represent specific addresses in the system’s memory map. The CPU will then communicate with the device by reading and writing to memory at the specified address.




DMA: Certain devices can access the system’s memory through a DMA channel, allowing them to write and process data without accessing the CPU. This can enhance performance.







● Listing Allocated Resources




The kernel keeps information related to allocated resources in the /proc directory. The relevant files are:




/proc/dma
/proc/interrupts
/proc/ioports
/proc/pci




Allocated resources can also be listed using tools such as lspci and dmesg:




lspci: lists chipset information of all attached PCI components. Lists I/O and IRQ settings with the -v flag . Also notice the -b (BUS centric) option which shows allocations assigned by the BIOS rather than the kernel.




dmesg. This displays the kernel message logged at boot time. The kernel scans all the hardware on the system and can automatically allocate modules (drivers) for given chipsets. These messages are also available in /var/log/dmesg.










● Typical Resources




Device
I/O port
IRQ

/dev/ttyS0
0x03f8
4

/dev/ttyS1
0x02f8
3

/dev/lp0
0x378
7

/dev/lp1
0x278
5

soundcard
0x220










● Manual Resourse Allocation




NOTICE:

This is a very common example, however since kernel modules are only discussed in LPI 102 some may find it difficult. You may skip this example and go to § 3





Example: configuring two ethernet cards







1. For statically compiled modules, parameters can be passed to the kernel at boot time. A typical example is when two ethernet cards are present and only the first one is detected. The following line tells the kernel that:




- there is an ethernet card using IRQ 10 and I/O 0x300

- there is another ethernet card using IRQ 9 and I/O 0x340




ether=10,0x300,eth0 ether=9,0x340,eth1




You type this line at the LILO/GRUB ‘boot:’ prompt, or else, as with the RAM settings before, edit

/etc/lilo.conf (use an append= statement) or /etc/grub.conf.




Notice that the ether= statement is a generic kernel command similar to root=, mem= or init=.

Also notice that you need not specify any information about the ethernet card (Intel, Netgear ...)







2. For dynamically compiled modules, IRQ and I/O address settings can be defined using /etc/modules.conf (or /etc/conf.modules). Assuming that in the above example both cards where using the e100.o kernel module, then /etc/modules.conf would contain the following:




alias eth0 e100

alias eth1 e100




options eth0 io=0x300 irq=10

options eth1 io=0x340 irq=9




3. USB Support



The Universal Serial Bus (USB) is a communication architecture designed to connect devices to a PC. These devices are devided into four classes:




Display Devices

Comminucation Devices

Audio Devices

Mass Storage Devices

Human Interface Devices (HID)




The devices are pluuged into a USB port which is driven by a USB controller. Support for USB controllers is present in the Linux kernel since version 2.2.7 ( The Linux USB sub-system HOWTO)




There are 3 types of USB host controlers:




Host Controler Kernel Module

OHCI (Compaq)
usb-ohci.o

UHCI (Intel)
usb-uhci.o

EHCI (USB v 2.0)
ehci-hdc.o








4. SCSI Devices



Types of SCSI devices




There are two types of SCSI interfaces:




- an 8-bit interface with a bus that supports 8 devices, this includes the controler, so there is only space for 7 block devices (tapes, disks, etc)

- a 16-bit interface (WIDE) with a bus that supports 16 devices including the controler, so there can only be 15 block devices.




Each device is assigned a unique SCSI ID that can be set using jumpers on the disk. The IDs range from 0 to 7 for 8-bit controllers and from 0 to 15 for 16-bit controllers.




Logical units




A group of disks for example, using RAID is called a logical unit and is seen as a single device with a unique SCSI ID. To make the distinction between logical units a SCSI logical unit number or LUN is used.




Booting SCSI disks




The system will boot from the device with SCSI ID 0 by default. This can be changed in the SCSI BIOS at boot time.




5. Network cards



● The Network Interface




The network interface card (NIC) must be supported by the kernel. You can get information about your current card using either of the following:




dmesg, lspci, scanpci, /proc/interrupts, /sbin/lsmod.or /etc/modules.conf:







dmesg

► Linux Tulip driver cersion 0.9.14 (February 20, 2001)

PCI: Enabled device 00:0f.0 (0004 ->0007)

PCI: Found IRQ 10 for device 00:0f.0

eth0: Lite-On 82cl68 PNIC rev 32 at 0xf800, 00:0A:CC:D3:6E:0F,

IRQ 10

eth0: MII transceiver #1 config 3000 status 7829 advertising














cat /proc/interrupts

► 0: 8729602 XT-PIC timer

1: 4 XT-PIC keyboard

2: 0 XT-PIC cascade

7: 0 XT-PIC parport0

8: 1 XT-PIC rtc

10: 622417 XT-PIC eth0

11: 0 XT-PIC usb-uhci

14: 143040 XT-PIC ide0

15: 180 XT-PIC ide1







/sbin/lsmod

► Module Size Used by

tulip 37360 1 (autoclean)




From the examples above we see that the Ethernet card’s chipset is Tulip, the i/o address is 0xf800 and the IRQ is 10. This information can be used either if the wrong module is being used or if the resources (i/o or IRQ) are conflicting.




This information can either be used to insert a module with a different i/o address (using the modprobe or insmod utilities) or can be saved in /etc/modules.conf (this will save the settings for the next bootup).




6. Setting up modems



● The Modem device




We will only consider serial modems. The following table shows the equivalence between DOS COM ports and Linux serial devices.




Table 1: Serial port equivalence DOS-Linux




DOS
Linux

COM1
/dev/ttyS0

COM2
/dev/ttyS1

COM3
/dev/ttyS2











Most Linux distributions have hardware browser tools (GUIs) which can detect modems. But one can also use setserial to scan the serial devices. With the -g option this utility will tell you which serial devices are in use:







setserial -g /dev/ttyS*




► /dev/ttyS0, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ: 4

/dev/ttyS1, UART: 16550A, Port: 0x02f8, IRQ: 3







A symbolic link called /dev/modem pointing to used serial portcan be used to reference the modem.







Manually linking the modem device




ln -s /dev/ttyS1 /dev/modem










The setserial tool is also used to set the speed of the serial port.




● Dialup Configuration (The LPI101 objectives only cover hardware detection and not configuration)




The wvdial commandline tool has a setup script called wvdialconf which will scan the system for modems (all serial and USB ports are scanned). Once the script has run a skeleton configuration file is generated as below:




Sample /etc/wvdial.conf file:




[Dialer Defaults]

Modem = /dev/ttyS1

Baud = 115200

Init1 = ATZ

Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 S11=55 +FCLASS=0

; Phone = <Target Phone Number>

; Username = <Your Login Name>

; Password = <Your Password>







A quick way to get started is to replace Defaults with the name of your provider say WorldISP, fill in the Usernam/Password entries and type the following:




wvdial WorldISP











7. Printer Configuration



Printing is covered in depth in LPI 102. From a hardware perspective, the printers are detected at boot time automatically and can be seen in the dmesg output.




Linux printing happens in two stages. First the raw data is filtered into a postscript format, then the printing itself is handled by the ghostscript, or gs utility.




Using printtool (not examined)




This utility creates an entry in /etc/printcap. The main features which need to be specified are the location of the input_filter=if, the spool_directory=sd and the printer_device=lp.




If the printtool fails to detect which parallel port corresponds to the printer device you can use the dmesg utility to recall the kernel's initial parallel port scan.

Here is an example of a system with a local printer plugged into the first parallel port /dev/lp0




Parallel port scan at the end of dmesg

parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x77 [SPP,ECP,ECPEPP,ECPPS2]

parport0: detected irq 7; use procfs to enable interrupt-driven operation.

parport_probe: succeeded

parport0: Printer, HEWLETT-PACKARD DESKJET 610C

lp0: using parport0 (polling)








Sample /etc/printcap file

# This file can be edited with the printtool in the control-panel.

##PRINTTOOL3## LOCAL cdj550 300x300 a4 {} DeskJet550 3 {}

lp:\

:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\

:mx#0:\

:sh:\

:lp=/dev/lp0:\

:if=/var/spool/lpd/lp/filter:








Figure 7: The gtk-based printtool GUI











Using cups




Cups is a newer administration and configuration tool for printers. It's main configuration files are stored in

/etc/cups. The printing process is the same except that cups uses its own filters situated in /usr/lib/cups.




The configuration tool for CUPS is a Web based GUI runing on port 631.




 When using cups lpd is replaced by the cupsd daemon.




NOTICE

A local printer is physically detected at boot time for both USB and parallel connections. Information on the boot process is displayed at any time with dmesg





8. Exercises






1. Use the dmesg command to view the /var/log/dmesg file. Search for keywords such as USB, tty or ETH0.

- What are the names of the USB controllers used?

- What are the IRQs for the first two serial ports?




2. Investigate the contents of the following files:

/proc/ioports
/proc/interrupts

/proc/pci

/proc/dma




3. The PCI bus:

- Investigate the output of lspci -v and scanpci –v. What type of ethernet card in

present?

- Verify that there are as many ‘bus ’ entries in /proc/pci. Does this file give as much

information as the commands above?




4. USB tools:

- Use lsmod and lsusb to determine which type of host controller is used on your

system, UHCI, OHCI or EHCI (for USB v 2.0).

- Use usbmodules to list the kernel module which can handle the plugged in interface.







 On the exam you may be asked questions on IRQ settings for devices such as the ethernet card, the parallel and the serial ports.




Managing Devices



1. Disks and Partitions






Physical disks:




On a running Linux system, disks are represented by entries in the /dev directory. The kernel communicates with devices using a unique major/minor pair combination. All major numbers are listed in /proc/devices. For example the first IDE controller‘s major number is 3:







Block devices:

1 ramdisk

2 fd

3 ide0




Hard disk descriptors in /dev begin with hd (IDE) or sd (SCSI), a SCSI tape would be st, and so on. Since a system can have more than one block device, an additional letter is added to the descriptor to indicate which device is considered.





Table 1
Physical block devices

hda
Primary Master

hdb
Primary Slave

hdc
Secondary Master

hdd
Secondary Slave

sda
First SCSI disk

sdb
Second SCSI disk









Disk Partitions:




Disks can further be partitioned. To keep track of the partitions a number is added at the end of each physical device.




Table 2
Partitions

hda1
First partition on first hard disk

hda2
Second partition on first hard disk

sdc3
Third partition on third SCSI disk








IDE type disks allow 4 primary partitions, one of which can be extended. The extended partition can further be divided into logical partitions. There can be a maximum of 62 partitions (primary and logical, excluding the extended).













Example 1: The primary partitions (1,2,3,4) and (1,2,5,6,7,










Typical output of fdisk -l




Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System

/dev/hda1 * 1 748 6297448+ b Win95 FAT32

/dev/hda2 785 788 32130 83 Linux

/dev/hda3 789 2432 13205430 5 Extended

/dev/hda5 789 1235 3590496 83 Linux

/dev/hda6 1236 1618 3076416 83 Linux

/dev/hda7 1619 1720 819283+ 83 Linux

/dev/hda8 1721 1784 514048+ 83 Linux

/dev/hda9 1785 1835 409626 83 Linux

/dev/hda10 1836 1874 313236 83 Linux

/dev/hda11 1875 1883 72261 82 Linux swap








On this system the main feature to notice is that there are 3 primary partitions. The third partition is extended (/dev/hda3) and holds 8 logical partitions. The primary partition /dev/hda3 is not used. In fact /dev/hda3 acts as a 'container' and a filesystem exists only on the enclosed logical partitions.







NOTICE

Make sure to distinguish between primary, extended and logical partitions. Also make sure you understand the naming convention for the IDE disks and controllers.


























2. Partitioning Tools:



1. Before installation: (not for exam purpose)




PartitionMagic

fips







Notice that fips only handles fat16 and fat32. On the other hand, PartitionMagic is much more versatile and can handle most common UNIX formats as well.




No partitioning is needed if for example C:\ and D:\ exist and the D:\ drive is empty.







Partitioning before installation:


















2. During installation: (not for exam purpose)




During the installation process the Linux partition is partitioned again. Why do Linux systems require further partitioning? To answer this question we first define mount points.




Defining a mount point: (also see figure page5)




One has the choice to associate a piece of hardware (or resource) to a directory. For example the root directory “/” which is more or less like the C:\ drive for DOS could correspond to the /dev/hda2 partition, and the subdirectory /boot could correspond to the partition /dev/hda3.







“/dev/hda3 is said to be mounted on /boot”. The directory on which a block device is mounted is then called a mount point.










While installing Linux you will have the choice of creating new partitions and associating each partition to a mount point.




For advanced users this is done in two steps:




1. Use the fdisk tool to create new partitions

2. Associate a mount point to each partition







For intermediate users most distributions include a userfriendly tool that does both these steps at once:




diskdrake (Mandrake)

DiskDruid (RedHat)




The very early success of RedHat over other projects such as Debian was the introduction of intuitive installation tools such as DiskDruid.




Finally, for beginners and busy sysadmin’s, the latest Linux distributions will automatically assign a partition scheme.










3. On a Running System:




Once the operating system is installed you can use the fdisk utility to configure new partitions.




We will next look at the basic syntax for fdisk







Example:




1) Start partitioning the first hard drive:







fdisk /dev/hda










2) Type m for help. Then create a new partition with n.

3) To write the changes to disk type w.

4) REBOOT.







These four points outline the steps you would follow to create new partitions. The last point

is often overlooked. This forces the partition table in the master boot record MBR to be reread.




NOTICE

You need to create a filesystem on a new partition with mkfs or mke2fs before using it





This ends the survey of available partitioning tools. We next take a look at bootloaders.



















3. Bootloaders



The MBR occupies the first sector of the disk (512 bytes) and contains the partition tables together with a bootloader. At boot time the bootloader reads the partition tables looking for a partition marked “active” and loads the first sector of this partion.







LILO the Linux Bootloader




There are roughly 3 parts envolved:




1. LILO




This is the loader itself. LILO is installed on the MBR and loads the second stage bootloader, generally situated in /boot/boot.b.




2. /etc/lilo.conf




The main options are specified here







boot* where LILO should be installed (/dev/hda is the MBR)

install which second stage to install (boot.b is the default)

prompt give the user a chance to choose an OS to boot

default name of the image that will be booted by default

timeout used with prompt, causes LILO to pause (units are 1/10 of a sec)

image* path to the kernel to boot (one can use ‘other’ to chain load)

label* name of the image. This is the name a user can type at the boot prompt

root* the name of the disk device which contains the root filesystem /

read-only* mount the root filesystem read-only for fsck to work properly

append give kernel parameters for modules that are statically compiled.

linear/lba32 these options are mutually exclusive. Both ask LILO to read the disk using

Linear Block Addressing. linear is typically used for very large disks.










3. /sbin/lilo




This binary reads it’s configuration file /etc/lilo.conf and installs the LILO bootloader.




/sbin/lilo should be run every time a change is made to /etc/lilo.conf










GRUB the Grand Unified Bootloader







GRUB is also installed on the MBR. You can either alter this MBR with the /sbin/grub shell or use a configuration file called /boot/grub/grub.conf which will be read by /sbin/grub-install




Detailed information about GRUB can be found in the info pages




























GRUB keywords (used in /boot/grub/rub.conf):




1. General/Global




default image that will boot by default (the first entry is 0)

timeout prompt timeout in seconds




2. Image




title name of the image

root where the 2nd stage bootloader and kernel are e.g (hd0,0) is /dev/hda

kernel path for the kernel starting from the previous root e.g /vmlinuz

ro read-only

root the filesystem root








Example grub.conf

default=0

timeout=10

splashimage=(hd0,0)/grub/splash.xpm.gz

title Linux (2.4.18-14)

root (hd0,0)

kernel /vmlinuz-2.4.18-14 ro root=/dev/hda5

initrd /initrd-2.4.18-14.img








4. Managed devices



At boot time the /etc/fstab file assigns mount points for block devices.




The /etc/fstab format




device mount-point fstype options dump-number fsck-number








Sample /etc/fstab




LABEL=/ / ext2 defaults 1 1

LABEL=/boot /boot ext2 defaults 1 2

LABEL=/home /home ext3 defaults 1 2

/dev/fd0 /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0

LABEL=/usr /usr ext2 defaults 1 2

LABEL=/var /var ext3 defaults 1 2

none /proc proc defaults 0 0

none /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0

none /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0

/dev/hdc9 swap,pri=-1 swap defaults 0 0

/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 noauto,owner,kudzu,ro 0 0










On a running system the /etc/fstab file also acts as a shortcut for assigning a resource to a specific directory. For example:




mount /dev/cdrom










The mount utility reads fstab and deduces where to mount the resource. Notice that some of the devices are accessed using a label. Labels are assigned to devices with the tune2fs tool:




tune2fs -L /usr/local /dev/hdb12










Option summary for mount:

rw,ro
read-write and read-only

users
the device can be read and unmounted by all users

user
the device can unmounted only be the user

owner
the device will change it's permission and belong to the user that mounted it

usrquota
start user quotas on the device

grpquota
start group quotas on the device








NOTICE

Remember that mount -a will mount all filesytems in /etc/fstab that have not been mounted and do not have the option noauto








5. Quotas



The quota tools allow administrators to set up quotas without having to reboot. Here are the steps.




1. Edit /etc/fstab and add usrquota to the options




2. Remount the partition:




mount -o remount <device>







3. Start the quota stats:




quotacheck -ca







The preliminary aquota.user file is generated at the top of the directory.
















4. Edit quotas for each user:




edquota -u <user>







Here a soft/hard limit must be set for both the number of blocks and inodes available for each user.




The system will allow the user to exceed the soft limit during a certain grace period. After the grace period has expired the soft limit will be enforced as a hard limit.




5. START enforcing quotas:




quotaon –a







Users can query the quota status with quota. The system administrator can generate reports with repquota or quotastats.







6. Exercises



1. Create 1 new partition on the /dev/hda device using fdisk.




fdisk /dev/hda




HINT: To create a new partition type n. The partition type defaults to 83 (Linux)

To write the new partition table type w.

The partition table needs to be read: REBOOT the computer !







2. Make a new filesystem (format) on one of the partitions:




mkfs <device>




3. (i) Make a directory called data




mkdir /data




(ii) Edit /etc/fstab and allocate the mount point /data to this new resource




<device> /data ext2 defaults 0 2




4. Force mount to read /etc/fstab:




mount –a




If this doesn't work check that each entry is correct in the fstab and make sure that the directory /data exists (2 (i))


5. Follow the steps in this chapter to enforce quotas on this device.




After step (2) run the mount command and look at the output. Which option from

/etc/fstab can be seen showing that quotas can be enforced on the device? _________




After step (3) which file is created in the /data directory? __________


Before testing quotas for with non-root users, add read-write permissions on /data




chmod o+rw /data




In extreme cases it may be easier to reboot and let the init scripts build the aquota.user (or aquota.group) file. If nothing is showing with the quotas, repquota, or quotastats tools make sure you have read-write access for everyone on /data [chmod a+rw /data ]


6. (OPTIONAL) The instructor computer has a NFS share. Find out which directory is shared and edit /etc/fstab to mount this share on /mnt/nfs. Use the noauto option fot the share not to mount at boot time.




7. SWAPPING bootloaders




a. Uninstall LILO from the MBR (or the floppy)

lilo –u

b. Modify the grub.conf sample on p. 22 to reflect your system

c. Install GRUB on the floppy with grub-install /dev/fd0







The Linux Filesystem



1. The Filesystem Structure



A filesystem is similar to a tree structure. The root of the tree is always represented on top and the leaves below.




As mentioned earlier, once partitions have been created each partition must be given a mount point. This is typically done at installation time. To help us understand where things are kept, let us look at the Linux file system hierarchy.




The top of a Linux file system hierarchy starts at root (/). This is similar to C:\ under DOS except that C:\ is also the first device, whereas the root directory can be mounted anywhere.




Figure 1: The base directories









The base directories are the first subdirectories under the root directory. These are installed by an rpm package usually called filesystem.




rpm -ql filesystem





During the booting process the kernel first mounts the root (/) partition. In order to mount and check any further partitions and filesystems a certain number of programs such as fsck, insmod or mount must be available.




 The directories /bin, /sbin, /etc and /lib must be subdirectories of root (/) and not mounted on separate partitions.







Base directories:







/bin and /sbin

Contain binaries needed to boot up the system and essential commands.




/dev

Location for device or special files




/etc

Host specific configuration files




/lib

Shared libraries for binaries in /bin and /sbin. Also contains kernel modules




/mnt/ or /media (Suse)

Mount point for external filesystems




/proc

Kernel information. Read-only except for /proc/sys/




/boot

Contains the Linux kernel, the system maps and the “second stage” bootloaders.




/home (optional)

The directories for users. Initially contains the contents from /etc/skel/




/root (optional)

The directory for user root




/tmp

Temporary files




/usr

User Specific Resource. Mainly static and shareable content




/usr/local or /opt (optional)

Add-on software applications. Can also contain shared libraries for add-on software.


/var/www, /var/ftp/ or /srv (Suse)

Location for HTML pages and anonymous FTP directories.




/var

Variable data, such as spools and logs. Contains both shareable (eg. /var/spool/mail) and non-shareable (eg. /var/log/) subdirectories.





2. Formatting and File System Consistency



In order to organise data on a disk partition one needs to create a file system. At installation time you will be asked which type of file system must be used.




Many file system types are supported. The ext2 file system type is the default and is also known as “Linux Native”.




A different file system type must be used for SWAP. The file system for Swap is of type swap and cannot be anything else.




The Second Extended File System




Lets take a closer look at the ext2 (second extended) file system. The ext2 consists of blocks of size 1024 bytes =1 KB (default). Without entering into too much detail, there are three types of blocks:




● Superblocks:







Repeated every 8193 blocks. Contains information about block-size, free inodes, last mounted time, etc …




● Inodes:







Contains pointers to data blocks. The first 12 blocks of data are directly accessed. If the data exceeds 12KB, then indirect inodes act as relays.

Each inode is 256 bytes and contains the name, user, group, permissions and time stamp of the associated data.




● Data Blocks:




These are either files or directories and contain the actual data.




Formatting tools




The file systems supported by the kernel allow one to read from a preformatted disk. To create these file systems while running a Linux system one also needs to install the associated formatting tools.




The formatting tool for ext2 is mkfs.ext2 or mke2fs. Similarly the formatting tool for the xfs file system type from Silicon Graphics will be mkfs.xfs and may have to be installed separately.




The mkfs tool acts as a front for all these file system types. The syntax is:




mkfs –t <fstype>







Notice that the ext3 is an ext2 file system type on which a journaling system has been added (see the exercises for details).







Example 1: Making a jfs filesystem




mkfs –t jfs /dev/hda12










Example 2: Making a ext2 filesystem




mke2fs /dev/hda11 [or mkfs –t ext2 /dev/hda11]











File System Consistancy




If the file system is damaged or corrupt, then the fsck utility should be run against the partition (the minimum requirement is that the file system be mounted as read-only).




fsck acts as a front that automatically detects the file system type of a partition. Then as with mkfs, the tools fsck.ext2, fsck.ext3 will be named accordingly.




You can explicitly specify a file system type with the following syntax:




fsck –t <fstype> <device>







Example: Checking a reiserfs filesystem on the /dev/sdb10 device:




fsck –t reiserfs /dev/sdb10

fsck.reiserfs /dev/sdb10








3. Monitoring Disk Usage



Using mount and df:




Both these tools work on a device level, as opposed to a directory level. The mount and umount tools maintain the list of mounted f