Practical UNIX

Managing Disk Space

A UNIX system has a number of resources attached to it. These resources are the I/O subsystem (which manages the disk), terminals, CPU, memory, and so on. This chapter concentrates on how to manage the disk space on a UNIX system. The various system resources are managed by the system administrator, who can log on as the root superuser and add, modify, or delete resources. To try to manage resources is inherently dangerous because a mistake can crash your system and corrupt your data. Sometimes it is necessary to take the system out of multiuser mode and run in single-user mode (maintenance mode) to change some critical system resources. Consult your system documentation.

UNIX Honor System All users have the potential to ...