Linux with Operating System Concepts

partitions.
• du—report on disk usage for given file(s) or directory(ies).
• dump—backup utility that can perform incremental backups, used in place of cpio 
in most cases.
• edquota—to establish quota values for a user or group using the vi editor.
• exportfs—permit specified file system to be mounted remotely.
• fsck—file system check; can locate bad blocks and repair files damaged by remaining 
open at the last system shutdown.
• lvm2—a program to handle maintenance on partitions using an LVM.
• mount—mount specified partition at the specified mount point.
• nfs—service that permits mounting of remote partitions.
• parted—a utility to handle partitions for instance by resizing, renaming, and moving 
them.
• quotacheck—used to generate a database of users/groups for the given file system; 
this is the first step in establishing quotas.
• repquota—used to display all quotas established for the users/groups of the given file 
system.
• setquota—used to establish quota values for a user or group from the command line.
• stat—display file statistics.
• tar—tape archive, historically used to perform backup to tape but today is most com-
monly used to create archives of files and directories.
• umount—unmount a partition.

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The Linux File System
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439
Linux directories and files of note discussed in this chapter:
• aquota.user—the database of users/groups of a file system generated by the quotacheck 
instruction, stored at the root level of the given file system (e.g., /home/aquota.user).
• /bin—location of common binary files (Linux commands and programs).
• /boot—location of boot loader program (e.g., GRUB) and Linux kernel, required for 
booting Linux.
• /dev—directory storing interfaces to most of the available devices (both physical like 
hard disk, optical disk, modem and logical like terminal windows (tty), programs like 
random and zero, and ramdisks).
• /etc—stores system configuration files; system administrators will often use the files 
in this directory.
• /etc/mtab—the currently mounted partitions; kept up-to-date.
• /etc/fstab—the file system table, specifies mount operations at system initialization 
time.
• /home—the users’ home directory space.
• /proc—stored in memory rather than on the file system, this directory stores infor-
mation about all running processes.
• /root—the system administrator’s home directory.
• /sbin—system administration binary files (commands, programs).
• /usr—application software and other common programs that are not found under /bin 
and /sbin.
• /var—system data files that grow over time such as log files, email files, and print 
spooler files.
REVIEW PROBLEMS
1. What is the difference between how early Windows and Linux index disk blocks?
2. What is the most recent version of the extended file system as used in Linux?
3. Which of the following file systems can Linux utilize: NFS, FAT, NTFS, Files-11?
4. What is a B
+
tree (you might have to research this)?
5. Match the character descriptor (as reported by 
ls –l
) with the type of file
a. - 
i. directory
b. b 
ii. symbolic 
link

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440
◾
Linux with Operating System Concepts
c. c 
iii. domain 
socket
d. d 
iv. regular 
file
e. l 
v. block device
f. p 
vi. character 
device
g. s 
vii. named 
pipe
6. What type of device is a USB drive?
7. What type of device is a modem?
8. What does the command 
mkfifo foo
do?
9. You have created a named pipe, mypipe, and performed 
wc* 
>
mypipe
. What 
happens? How do you complete the pipe?
10. Assume an inode stores 10 direct pointers and 2 indirect pointers (no doubly or triply 
indirect pointers). Assume that an indirect block stores 10 pointers. How many disk 
blocks could the largest file contain if this was the case?
11. Assume an inode stores 12 direct pointers, 2 indirect pointers, 2 doubly indirect 
pointers, and 1 triply indirect pointer. Assume that an indirect block stores 24 point-
ers. How many disk blocks could the largest file contain in this case?
12. What is an i-list?
13. Provide two ways to obtain a file’s inode number.
14. You issue the instruction 
stat –c "%h" somefile
and the response is 3. What 
does this mean?
15. How does the -f option alter how stat works?
16. Why do you need to partition a Linux file system?
17. If you were to install Linux, which partitions would you create and why?
18. An optical drive will often have partition options of: ro, noauto, user, exec. Explain 
what each means and why specifically we would find each of these for the optical drive.
19. Under what circumstance would you specify the ro option for a remotely mounted