Essential System Administration, Third Edition

Managing Unix filesystems is one of the system administrator's most importanttasks. You are responsible for ensuring that users have access to the files they need and that these files remain uncorrupted and secure. Administering afilesystem includes tasks such as:

• Making local and remote files available to users

• Monitoring and managing the system's disk resources

• Protecting against file corruption, hardware failures, and user errors via a well-planned backup schedule

• Ensuring data confidentiality by limiting file and system access

• Checking for and correcting filesystem corruption

• Connecting and configuring new storage devices when needed

Some of these tasks such as checking for and correcting filesystem corruption are usually done automatically at boot time, as part of the initial system startup. Others like monitoring disk space usage and backups are often done manually, on a periodic or as-needed basis.

This chapter describes how Unix handles disks and filesystems. It covers such topics as mounting and dismounting local and remote filesystems, the filesystem configuration file, making local filesystems available to remote Unix and Windows users, checking local filesystem integrity with the fsck utility, and adding new disks to the system. It also looks at some optional filesystem features offered in some Unix implementations.