LPI Linux Certification in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Filesystem (Topic 2.203)

Review Questions

1. What is the difference between the /etc/fstab and the /etc/mtab files?

2. What is the meaning of the sixth field in the /etc/fstab file?

3. Where would the following line appear, and what does it accomplish?

   cdrom   -fstype=iso9660,ro,sync,nodev,nosuid    :/dev/cdrom

4. What type of information is found in the /proc/mounts file?

5. For a device named /dev/sda1, you wish to learn the last mount time, the maximum count of boot times that have occurred between checks by fsck, and the maximum mount counts. You know that some of the output may not be understood by the dumpe2fs command. What dumpe2fs option would you use to get this command to report all findings?

6. What command flushes all data and writes it to disk?

7. How can you see that an attempted copy using the dd command failed?

8. You have tried to use the swapon command on a partition named /dev/hda3. This partition has the following entry in /etc/fstab:

   /dev/hda3       /            ext3    defaults,noauto,errors=remount-ro 0

   What information in this line can help you identify the most likely problem?

Answers

1. The /etc/fstab file shows the filesystems that will be mounted. The /etc/mtab file lists the filesystems that are mounted. In other words, /etc/fstab controls the behavior of the system, whereas /etc/mtab reflects the results.

2. The sixth field of /etc/fstab determines the order that partitions (that is, filesystems) are checked when a system boots.

3. The entry is part of the autofs configuration file. The entry automatically mounts the