LPI Linux Certification/Maintaining A Linux File System

Detailed Objective (203.2)
(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:
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Formatting a partition
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

mke2fs /dev/hda1 mke2fs -j /dev/hda1
 * 1) ext2
 * 1) ext3

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

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

you can also tune a reiserfs partition using reiserfstune

reiserfstune --journal-new-device /dev/hda2 -f /dev/hda1
 * 1) create a new journal for /dev/hda1 into /dev/hda2

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