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The Linux System Administrators'
Guide
Version 0.6.2
Lars Wirzenius
liw@iki.fi
Joanna Oja
viu@iki.fi

The Linux System Administrators' Guide: Version 0.6.2
by Lars Wirzenius
by Joanna Oja
An introduction to system administration of a Linux system for novices.
Copyright 1993--1998 Lars Wirzenius.
Trademarks are owned by their owners.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved
on all copies.
Permission is granted to process the document source code through TeX or other formatters and print the results, and distribute the printed
document, provided the printed document carries copying permission notice identical to this one, including the references to where the source
code can be found and the official home page.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire
resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions.
The author would appreciate a notification of modifications, translations, and printed versions. Thank you.

Table of Contents
Dedication ...................................................................................................................................................7
Source and pre­formatted versions available ..........................................................................................8
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................................9
The Linux Documentation Project ...................................................................................................11
2. Overview of a Linux System ...............................................................................................................12
Various parts of an operating system ...............................................................................................12
Important parts of the kernel ............................................................................................................12
Major services in a UNIX system ....................................................................................................14
init ..........................................................................................................................................14
Logins from terminals ............................................................................................................14
Syslog .....................................................................................................................................15
Periodic command execution: cron and at.............................................................................15
Graphical user interface..........................................................................................................15
Networking .............................................................................................................................15
Network logins .......................................................................................................................16
Network file systems ..............................................................................................................16
Mail.........................................................................................................................................16
Printing ...................................................................................................................................17
The filesystem layout..............................................................................................................17
3. Overview of the Directory Tree ..........................................................................................................19
Background ......................................................................................................................................19
The root filesystem...........................................................................................................................21
The /etc directory ..........................................................................................................................23
The /dev directory ..........................................................................................................................25
The /usr filesystem.........................................................................................................................26
The /var filesystem.........................................................................................................................27
The /proc filesystem ......................................................................................................................28
4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media...............................................................................................32
Two kinds of devices ........................................................................................................................32
Hard disks ........................................................................................................................................33
Floppies ............................................................................................................................................36
CD­ROM's .......................................................................................................................................37
Tapes ................................................................................................................................................38
Formatting ........................................................................................................................................38
Partitions ..........................................................................................................................................41
The MBR, boot sectors and partition table.............................................................................41
3

Extended and logical partitions ..............................................................................................42
Partition types .........................................................................................................................43
Partitioning a hard disk...........................................................................................................44
Device files and partitions ......................................................................................................45
Filesystems.......................................................................................................................................45
What are filesystems? .............................................................................................................45
Filesystems galore ..................................................................................................................46
Which filesystem should be used?..........................................................................................49
Creating a filesystem ..............................................................................................................49
Mounting and unmounting .....................................................................................................51
Checking filesystem integrity with fsck .................................................................................55
Checking for disk errors with badblocks...............................................................................55
Fighting fragmentation ...........................................................................................................56
Other tools for all filesystems.................................................................................................56
Other tools for the ext2 filesystem..........................................................................................57
Disks without filesystems.................................................................................................................58
Allocating disk space .......................................................................................................................59
Partitioning schemes...............................................................................................................59
Space requirements.................................................................................................................60
Examples of hard disk allocation ...........................................................................................60
Adding more disk space for Linux .........................................................................................61
Tips for saving disk space.......................................................................................................61
5. Memory Management .........................................................................................................................63
What is virtual memory? ..................................................................................................................63
Creating a swap space ......................................................................................................................63
Using a swap space ..........................................................................................................................64
Sharing swap spaces with other operating systems..........................................................................66
Allocating swap space......................................................................................................................66
The buffer cache...............................................................................................................................67
6. Boots And Shutdowns..........................................................................................................................70
An overview of boots and shutdowns ..............................................................................................70
The boot process in closer look........................................................................................................71
More about shutdowns .....................................................................................................................73
Rebooting .........................................................................................................................................74
Single user mode ..............................................................................................................................75
Emergency boot floppies ..................................................................................................................75
7. init..........................................................................................................................................................76
init comes first .................................................................................................................................76
Configuring init to start getty: the /etc/inittab file ..................................................................76
4

Run levels .........................................................................................................................................78
Special configuration in /etc/inittab.........................................................................................79
Booting in single user mode.............................................................................................................79
8. Logging In And Out.............................................................................................................................81
Logins via terminals.........................................................................................................................81
Logins via the network.....................................................................................................................83
What login does ...............................................................................................................................84
X and xdm ........................................................................................................................................84
Access control ..................................................................................................................................84
Shell startup......................................................................................................................................85
9. Managing user accounts......................................................................................................................86
What's an account? ..........................................................................................................................86
Creating a user .................................................................................................................................86
/etc/passwd and other informative files .............................................................................86
Picking numeric user and group ids .......................................................................................87
Initial environment: /etc/skel ............................................................................................87
Creating a user by hand ..........................................................................................................88
Changing user properties .................................................................................................................89
Removing a user...............................................................................................................................89
Disabling a user temporarily ............................................................................................................90
10. Backups...............................................................................................................................................92
On the importance of being backed up ............................................................................................92
Selecting the backup medium ..........................................................................................................93
Selecting the backup tool .................................................................................................................93
Simple backups ................................................................................................................................94
Making backups with tar .......................................................................................................94
Restoring files with tar...........................................................................................................96
Multilevel backups ...........................................................................................................................97
What to back up ...............................................................................................................................99
Compressed backups ........................................................................................................................99
11. Keeping Time ...................................................................................................................................101
Time zones .....................................................................................................................................101
The hardware and software clocks .................................................................................................102
Showing and setting time ...............................................................................................................102
When the clock is wrong................................................................................................................103
Glossary (DRAFT).................................................................................................................................105
5

List of Tables
4­1. Partition types (from the Linux fdisk program). ................................................................................43
7­1. Run level numbers ..............................................................................................................................78
10­1. Efficient backup scheme using many backup levels.........................................................................98
List of Figures
2­1. Some of the more important parts of the Linux kernel ......................................................................12
3­1. Parts of a Unix directory tree. Dashed lines indicate partition limits.................................................19
4­1. A schematic picture of a hard disk. ....................................................................................................34
4­2. A sample hard disk partitioning. ........................................................................................................42
4­3. Three separate filesystems..................................................................................................................51
4­4. /home and /usr have been mounted.................................................................................................51
4­5. Sample output from dumpe2fs ..........................................................................................................57
8­1. Logins via terminals: the interaction of init, getty, login, and the shell............................................81
10­1. A sample multilevel backup schedule. .............................................................................................97
6

Dedication
This place is dedicated to a future dedication.
7

Source and pre­formatted versions available
The source code and and other machine readable formats of this book can be found on the Internet via
anonymous FTP at the Linux Documentation Project home page http://sunsite.unc.edu/LDP/, or at the
home page of this book at http://www.iki.fi/viu/linux/sag/. Available are at least PostScript and TeX .DVI
formats.
8

Chapter 1. Introduction
``In the beginning, the file was without form, and void; and emptiness was upon the face of the bits. And the
Fingers of the Author moved upon the face of the keyboard. And the Author said, Let there be words, and there
were words.''
This manual, the Linux System Administrators' Guide, describes the system administration aspects of
using Linux. It is intended for people who know next to nothing about system administration (as in
``what is it?''), but who have already mastered at least the basics of normal usage. This manual also
doesn't tell you how to install Linux; that is described in the Installation and Getting Started document.
See below for more information about Linux manuals.
System administration is all the things that one has to do to keep a computer system in a useable shape. It
includes things like backing up files (and restoring them if necessary), installing new programs, creating
accounts for users (and deleting them when no longer needed), making certain that the filesystem is not
corrupted, and so on. If a computer were, say, a house, system administration would be called
maintenance, and would include cleaning, fixing broken windows, and other such things. System
administration is not called maintenance, because that would be too simple. 1
The structure of this manual is such that many of the chapters should be usable independently, so that if
you need information about, say, backups, you can read just that chapter. This hopefully makes the book
easier to use as a reference manual, and makes it possible to read just a small part when needed, instead
of having to read everything. However, this manual is first and foremost a tutorial, and a reference
manual only as a lucky coincidence.
This manual is not intended to be used completely by itself. Plenty of the rest of the Linux
documentation is also important for system administrators. After all, a system administrator is just a user
with special privileges and duties. A very important resource are the manual pages, which should always
be consulted when a command is not familiar.
While this manual is targeted at Linux, a general principle has been that it should be useful with other
UNIX based operating systems as well. Unfortunately, since there is so much variance between different
versions of UNIX in general, and in system administration in particular, there is little hope to cover all
variants. Even covering all possibilities for Linux is difficult, due to the nature of its development.
There is no one official Linux distribution, so different people have different setups, and many people
have a setup they have built up themselves. This book is not targeted at any one distribution, even though
I use the Debian GNU/Linux system almost exclusively. When possible, I have tried to point out
differences, and explain several alternatives.
I have tried to describe how things work, rather than just listing ``five easy steps'' for each task. This
means that there is much information here that is not necessary for everyone, but those parts are marked
9

Chapter 1. Introduction
as such and can be skipped if you use a preconfigured system. Reading everything will, naturally,
increase your understanding of the system and should make using and administering it more pleasant.
Like all other Linux related development, the work was done on a volunteer basis: I did it because I
thought it might be fun and because I felt it should be done. However, like all volunteer work, there is a
limit to how much effort I have been able to spend, and also on how much knowledge and experience I
have. This means that the manual is not necessarily as good as it would be if a wizard had been paid
handsomely to write it and had spent a few years to perfect it. I think, of course, that it is pretty nice, but
be warned.
One particular point where I have cut corners is that I have not covered very thoroughly many things that
are already well documented in other freely available manuals. This applies especially to program
specific documentation, such as all the details of using mkfs. I only describe the purpose of the program,
and as much of its usage as is necessary for the purposes of this manual. For further information, I refer
the gentle reader to these other manuals. Usually, all of the referred to documentation is part of the full
Linux documentation set.
Lars has tried to make this manual as good as possible and I would like, as a current maintainer, to keep
up the good work. I would really like to hear from you if you have any ideas on how to make it better.
Bad language, factual errors, ideas for new areas to cover, rewritten sections, information about how
various UNIX versions do things, I am interested in all of it. My contact information is available via the
World Wide Web at http://www.iki.fi/viu/ (http://www.iki.fi/viu/).
Many people have helped me with this book, directly or indirectly. I would like to especially thank Matt
Welsh for inspiration and LDP leadership, Andy Oram for getting me to work again with much­valued
feedback, Olaf Kirch for showing me that it can be done, and Adam Richter at Yggdrasil and others for
showing me that other people can find it interesting as well.
Stephen Tweedie, H. Peter Anvin, Remy Card, Theodore Ts'o, and Stephen Tweedie have let me borrow
their work (and thus make the book look thicker and much more impressive): a comparison between the
xia and ext2 filesystems, the device list and a description of the ext2 filesystem. These aren't part of the
book any more. I am most grateful for this, and very apologetic for the earlier versions that sometimes
lacked proper attribution.
In addition, I would like to thank Mark Komarinski for sending his material in 1993 and the many system
administration columns in Linux Journal. They are quite informative and inspirational.
Many useful comments have been sent by a large number of people. My miniature black hole of an
archive doesn't let me find all their names, but some of them are, in alphabetical order: Paul Caprioli,
Ales Cepek, Marie­France Declerfayt, Dave Dobson, Olaf Flebbe, Helmut Geyer, Larry Greenfield and
his father, Stephen Harris, Jyrki Havia, Jim Haynes, York Lam, Timothy Andrew Lister, Jim Lynch,
Michael J. Micek, Jacob Navia, Dan Poirier, Daniel Quinlan, Jouni K Seppnen, Philippe Steindl, G.B.
Stotte. My apologies to anyone I have forgotten.
META need to add typographical conventsions and LDP blurb here.
10

Chapter 1. Introduction
The Linux Documentation Project
The Linux Documentation Project, or LDP, is a loose team of writers, proofreaders, and editors who are
working together to provide complete documentation for the Linux operating system. The overall
coordinator of the project is Greg Hankins.
This manual is one in a set of several being distributed by the LDP, including a Linux Users' Guide,
System Administrators' Guide, Network Administrators' Guide, and Kernel Hackers' Guide. These
manuals are all available in source format, .dvi format, and postscript output by anonymous FTP from
sunsite.unc.edu, in the directory /pub/Linux/docs/LDP.
We encourage anyone with a penchant for writing or editing to join us in improving Linux
documentation. If you have Internet e­mail access, you can contact Greg Hankins at
.
Notes
1. There are some people who do call it that, but that's just because they have never read this manual,
poor things.
11

Chapter 2. Overview of a Linux System
``God looked over everything he had made, and saw that it was very good. '' (Genesis 1:31)
This chapter gives an overview of a Linux system. First, the major services provided by the operating
system are described. Then, the programs that implement these services are described with a
considerable lack of detail. The purpose of this chapter is to give an understanding of the system as a
whole, so that each part is described in detail elsewhere.
Various parts of an operating system
A UNIX operating system consists of a kernel and some system programs. There are also some
application programs for doing work. The kernel is the heart of the operating system. 1 It keeps track of
files on the disk, starts programs and runs them concurrently, assigns memory and other resources to
various processes, receives packets from and sends packets to the network, and so on. The kernel does
very little by itself, but it provides tools with which all services can be built. It also prevents anyone from
accessing the hardware directly, forcing everyone to use the tools it provides. This way the kernel
provides some protection for users from each other. The tools provided by the kernel are used via system
calls; see manual page section 2 for more information on these.
The system programs use the tools provided by the kernel to implement the various services required
from an operating system. System programs, and all other programs, run `on top of the kernel', in what is
called the user mode. The difference between system and application programs is one of intent:
applications are intended for getting useful things done (or for playing, if it happens to be a game),
whereas system programs are needed to get the system working. A word processor is an application;
telnet is a system program. The difference is often somewhat blurry, however, and is important only to
compulsive categorizers.
An operating system can also contain compilers and their corresponding libraries (GCC and the C library
in particular under Linux), although not all programming languages need be part of the operating system.
Documentation, and sometimes even games, can also be part of it. Traditionally, the operating system
has been defined by the contents of the installation tape or disks; with Linux it is not as clear since it is
spread all over the FTP sites of the world.
Important parts of the kernel
The Linux kernel consists of several important parts: process management, memory management,
hardware device drivers, filesystem drivers, network management, and various other bits and pieces.
12

Chapter 2. Overview of a Linux System
Figure 2­1 shows some of them.
Figure 2­1. Some of the more important parts of the Linux kernel
System call interface
Virtual filesystem
management
IDE harddisk
driver
Floppy disk
IDE hard disk
Various filesystem
drivers
Floppy disk
driver
Memory
manager
Process
manager
Ethernet card
Abstract network
services (sockets)
TCP/IP protocol
drivers
Ethernet card
driver
Hardware
Kernel
Normal programs
Kernel
User level programs
Probably the most important parts of the kernel (nothing else works without them) are memory
management and process management. Memory management takes care of assigning memory areas and
swap space areas to processes, parts of the kernel, and for the buffer cache. Process management creates
processes, and implements multitasking by switching the active process on the processor.
At the lowest level, the kernel contains a hardware device driver for each kind of hardware it supports.
Since the world is full of different kinds of hardware, the number of hardware device drivers is large.
13

Chapter 2. Overview of a Linux System
There are often many otherwise similar pieces of hardware that differ in how they are controlled by
software. The similarities make it possible to have general classes of drivers that support similar
operations; each member of the class has the same interface to the rest of the kernel but differs in what it
needs to do to implement them. For example, all disk drivers look alike to the rest of the kernel, i.e., they
all have operations like `initialize the drive', `read sector N', and `write sector N'.
Some software services provided by the kernel itself have similar properties, and can therefore be
abstracted into classes. For example, the various network protocols have been abstracted into one
programming interface, the BSD socket library. Another example is the virtual filesystem (VFS) layer
that abstracts the filesystem operations away from their implementation. Each filesystem type provides
an implementation of each filesystem operation. When some entity tries to use a filesystem, the request
goes via the VFS, which routes the request to the proper filesystem driver.
Major services in a UNIX system
This section describes some of the more important UNIX services, but without much detail. They are
described more thoroughly in later chapters.
init
The single most important service in a UNIX system is provided by init. init is started as the first process
of every UNIX system, as the last thing the kernel does when it boots. When init starts, it continues the
boot process by doing various startup chores (checking and mounting filesystems, starting daemons, etc).
The exact list of things that init does depends on which flavor it is; there are several to choose from. init
usually provides the concept of single user mode, in which no one can log in and root uses a shell at the
console; the usual mode is called multiuser mode. Some flavors generalize this as run levels; single and
multiuser modes are considered to be two run levels, and there can be additional ones as well, for
example, to run X on the console.
In normal operation, init makes sure getty is working (to allow users to log in), and to adopt orphan
processes (processes whose parent has died; in UNIX all processes must be in a single tree, so orphans
must be adopted).
When the system is shut down, it is init that is in charge of killing all other processes, unmounting all
filesystems and stopping the processor, along with anything else it has been configured to do.
Logins from terminals
14

Chapter 2. Overview of a Linux System
Logins from terminals (via serial lines) and the console (when not running X) are provided by the getty
program. init starts a separate instance of getty for each terminal for which logins are to be allowed.
getty reads the username and runs the login program, which reads the password. If the username and
password are correct, login runs the shell. When the shell terminates, i.e., the user logs out, or when
login terminated because the username and password didn't match, init notices this and starts a new
instance of getty. The kernel has no notion of logins, this is all handled by the system programs.
Syslog
The kernel and many system programs produce error, warning, and other messages. It is often important
that these messages can be viewed later, even much later, so they should be written to a file. The program
doing this is syslog. It can be configured to sort the messages to different files according to writer or
degree of importance. For example, kernel messages are often directed to a separate file from the others,
since kernel messages are often more important and need to be read regularly to spot problems.
Periodic command execution: cron and at
Both users and system administrators often need to run commands periodically. For example, the system
administrator might want to run a command to clean the directories with temporary files (/tmp and
/var/tmp) from old files, to keep the disks from filling up, since not all programs clean up after
themselves correctly.
The cron service is set up to do this. Each user has a crontab file, where he lists the commands he
wants to execute and the times they should be executed. The cron daemon takes care of starting the
commands when specified.
The at service is similar to cron, but it is once only: the command is executed at the given time, but it is
not repeated.
Graphical user interface
UNIX and Linux don't incorporate the user interface into the kernel; instead, they let it be implemented
by user level programs. This applies for both text mode and graphical environments.
This arrangement makes the system more flexible, but has the disadvantage that it is simple to implement
a different user interface for each program, making the system harder to learn.
The graphical environment primarily used with Linux is called the X Window System (X for short). X
also does not implement a user interface; it only implements a window system, i.e., tools with which a
15

Chapter 2. Overview of a Linux System
graphical user interface can be implemented. The three most popular user interface styles implemented
over X are Athena, Motif, and Open Look.
Networking
Networking is the act of connecting two or more computers so that they can communicate with each
other. The actual methods of connecting and communicating are slightly complicated, but the end result
is very useful.
UNIX operating systems have many networking features. Most basic services (filesystems, printing,
backups, etc) can be done over the network. This can make system administration easier, since it allows
centralized administration, while still reaping in the benefits of microcomputing and distributed
computing, such as lower costs and better fault tolerance.
However, this book merely glances at networking; see the Linux Network Administrators' Guide for
more information, including a basic description of how networks operate.
Network logins
Network logins work a little differently than normal logins. There is a separate physical serial line for
each terminal via which it is possible to log in. For each person logging in via the network, there is a
separate virtual network connection, and there can be any number of these. 2 It is therefore not possible
to run a separate getty for each possible virtual connection. There are also several different ways to log
in via a network, telnet and rlogin being the major ones in TCP/IP networks.
Network logins have, instead of a herd of gettys, a single daemon per way of logging in (telnet and
rlogin have separate daemons) that listens for all incoming login attempts. When it notices one, it starts a
new instance of itself to handle that single attempt; the original instance continues to listen for other
attempts. The new instance works similarly to getty.
Network file systems
One of the more useful things that can be done with networking services is sharing files via a network file
system. The one usually used is called the Network File System, or NFS, developed by Sun.
With a network file system any file operations done by a program on one machine are sent over the
network to another computer. This fools the program to think that all the files on the other computer are
actually on the computer the program is running on. This makes information sharing extremely simple,
since it requires no modifications to programs.
16

Chapter 2. Overview of a Linux System
Mail
Electronic mail is usually the most important method for communicating via computer. An electronic
letter is stored in a file using a special format, and special mail programs are used to send and read the
letters.
Each user has an incoming mailbox (a file in the special format), where all new mail is stored. When
someone sends mail, the mail program locates the receiver's mailbox and appends the letter to the
mailbox file. If the receiver's mailbox is in another machine, the letter is sent to the other machine, which
delivers it to the mailbox as it best sees fit.
The mail system consists of many programs. The delivery of mail to local or remote mailboxes is done
by one program (the mail transfer agent or MTA, e.g., sendmail or smail), while the programs users use
are many and varied (mail user agent or MUA, e.g., pine or elm). The mailboxes are usually stored in
/var/spool/mail.
Printing
Only one person can use a printer at one time, but it is uneconomical not to share printers between users.
The printer is therefore managed by software that implements a print queue: all print jobs are put into a
queue and whenever the printer is done with one job, the next one is sent to it automatically. This relieves
the users from organizing the print queue and fighting over control of the printer. 3
The print queue software also spools the printouts on disk, i.e., the text is kept in a file while the job is in
the queue. This allows an application program to spit out the print jobs quickly to the print queue
software; the application does not have to wait until the job is actually printed to continue. This is really
convenient, since it allows one to print out one version, and not have to wait for it to be printed before
one can make a completely revised new version.
The filesystem layout
The filesystem is divided into many parts; usually along the lines of a root filesystem with /bin, /lib,
/etc, /dev, and a few others; a /usr filesystem with programs and unchanging data; a /var filesystem
with changing data (such as log files); and a /home filesystem for everyone's personal files. Depending
on the hardware configuration and the decisions of the system administrator, the division can be
different; it can even be all in one filesystem.
Chapter 3 describes the filesystem layout in some detail; the Linux Filesystem Standard covers it in
somewhat more detail.
17

Chapter 2. Overview of a Linux System
Notes
1. In fact, it is often mistakenly considered to be the operating system itself, but it is not. An operating
system provides many more services than a plain kernel.
2. Well, at least there can be many. Network bandwidth still being a scarce resource, there is still some
practical upper limit to the number of concurrent logins via one network connection.
3. Instead, they form a new queue at the printer, waiting for their printouts, since no one ever seems to
be able to get the queue software to know exactly when anyone's printout is really finished. This is a
great boost to intra­office social relations.
18

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
`` Two days later, there was Pooh, sitting on his branch, dangling his legs, and there, beside him, were four pots
of honey...'' (A.A. Milne)
This chapter describes the important parts of a standard Linux directory tree, based on the FSSTND
filesystem standard. It outlines the normal way of breaking the directory tree into separate filesystems
with different purposes and gives the motivation behind this particular split. Some alternative ways of
splitting are also described.
Background
This chapter is loosely based on the Linux filesystem standard, FSSTND, version 1.2 (see the
bibliography), which attempts to set a standard for how the directory tree in a Linux system is organized.
Such a standard has the advantage that it will be easier to write or port software for Linux, and to
administer Linux machines, since everything will be in their usual places. There is no authority behind
the standard that forces anyone to comply with it, but it has got the support of most, if not all, Linux
distributions. It is not a good idea to break with the FSSTND without very compelling reasons. The
FSSTND attempts to follow Unix tradition and current trends, making Linux systems familiar to those
with experience with other Unix systems, and vice versa.
This chapter is not as detailed as the FSSTND. A system administrator should also read the FSSTND for
a complete understanding.
This chapter does not explain all files in detail. The intention is not to describe every file, but to give an
overview of the system from a filesystem point of view. Further information on each file is available
elsewhere in this manual or the manual pages.
The full directory tree is intended to be breakable into smaller parts, each on its own disk or partition, to
accomodate to disk size limits and to ease backup and other system administration. The major parts are
the root, /usr, /var, and /home filesystems (see Figure 3­1). Each part has a different purpose. The
directory tree has been designed so that it works well in a network of Linux machines which may share
some parts of the filesystems over a read­only device (e.g., a CD­ROM), or over the network with NFS.
19

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
Figure 3­1. Parts of a Unix directory tree. Dashed lines indicate partition limits.
home dev
bin proc lib etc var
usr boot
ftp liw linus log tmp
run
lib spool
bin lib man tmp
/
The roles of the different parts of the directory tree are described below.
. The root filesystem is specific for each machine (it is generally stored on a local disk, although it could
be a ramdisk or network drive as well) and contains the files that are necessary for booting the system
up, and to bring it up to such a state that the other filesystems may be mounted. The contents of the
root filesystem will therefore be sufficient for the single user state. It will also contain tools for fixing a
broken system, and for recovering lost files from backups.
. The /usr filesystem contains all commands, libraries, manual pages, and other unchanging files
needed during normal operation. No files in /usr should be specific for any given machine, nor
should they be modified during normal use. This allows the files to be shared over the network, which
can be cost­effective since it saves disk space (there can easily be hundreds of megabytes in /usr),
and can make administration easier (only the master /usr needs to be changed when updating an
application, not each machine separately). Even if the filesystem is on a local disk, it could be
mounted read­only, to lessen the chance of filesystem corruption during a crash.
. The /var filesystem contains files that change, such as spool directories (for mail, news, printers, etc),
log files, formatted manual pages, and temporary files. Traditionally everything in /var has been
somewhere below /usr, but that made it impossible to mount /usr read­only.
. The /home filesystem contains the users' home directories, i.e., all the real data on the system.
Separating home directories to their own directory tree or filesystem makes backups easier; the other
parts often do not have to be backed up, or at least not as often (they seldom change). A big /home
might have to be broken on several filesystems, which requires adding an extra naming level below
20

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
/home, e.g., /home/students and /home/staff.
Although the different parts have been called filesystems above, there is no requirement that they
actually be on separate filesystems. They could easily be kept in a single one if the system is a small
single­user system and the user wants to keep things simple. The directory tree might also be divided into
filesystems differently, depending on how large the disks are, and how space is allocated for various
purposes. The important part, though, is that all the standard names work; even if, say, /var and /usr
are actually on the same partition, the names /usr/lib/libc.a and /var/log/messages must work,
for example by moving files below /var into /usr/var, and making /var a symlink to /usr/var.
The Unix filesystem structure groups files according to purpose, i.e., all commands are in one place, all
data files in another, documentation in a third, and so on. An alternative would be to group files files
according to the program they belong to, i.e., all Emacs files would be in one directory, all TeX in
another, and so on. The problem with the latter approach is that it makes it difficult to share files (the
program directory often contains both static and shareable and changing and non­shareable files), and
sometimes to even find the files (e.g., manual pages in a huge number of places, and making the manual
page programs find all of them is a maintenance nightmare).
The root filesystem
The root filesystem should generally be small, since it contains very critical files and a small,
infrequently modified filesystem has a better chance of not getting corrupted. A corrupted root filesystem
will generally mean that the system becomes unbootable except with special measures (e.g., from a
floppy), so you don't want to risk it.
The root directory generally doesn't contain any files, except perhaps the standard boot image for the
system, usually called /vmlinuz. All other files are in subdirectories in the root filesystems:
/bin
Commands needed during bootup that might be used by normal users (probably after bootup).
/sbin
Like /bin, but the commands are not intended for normal users, although they may use them if
necessary and allowed.
/etc
21

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
Configuration files specific to the machine.
/root
The home directory for user root.
/lib
Shared libraries needed by the programs on the root filesystem.
/lib/modules
Loadable kernel modules, especially those that are needed to boot the system when recovering from
disasters (e.g., network and filesystem drivers).
/dev
Device files.
/tmp
Temporary files. Programs running after bootup should use /var/tmp, not /tmp, since the former
is probably on a disk with more space.
/boot
Files used by the bootstrap loader, e.g., LILO. Kernel images are often kept here instead of in the
root directory. If there are many kernel images, the directory can easily grow rather big, and it might
be better to keep it in a separate filesystem. Another reason would be to make sure the kernel
images are within the first 1024 cylinders of an IDE disk.
/mnt
Mount point for temporary mounts by the system administrator. Programs aren't supposed to mount
on /mnt automatically. /mnt might be divided into subdirectories (e.g., /mnt/dosa might be the
floppy drive using an MS­DOS filesystem, and /mnt/exta might be the same with an ext2
filesystem).
22

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
/proc, /usr, /var, /home
Mount points for the other filesystems.
The /etc directory
The /etc directory contains a lot of files. Some of them are described below. For others, you should
determine which program they belong to and read the manual page for that program. Many networking
configuration files are in /etc as well, and are described in the Networking Administrators' Guide.
/etc/rc or /etc/rc.d or /etc/rc?.d
Scripts or directories of scripts to run at startup or when changing the run level. See the chapter on
init for further information.
/etc/passwd
The user database, with fields giving the username, real name, home directory, encrypted password,
and other information about each user. The format is documented in the passwd manual page.
/etc/fdprm
Floppy disk parameter table. Describes what different floppy disk formats look like. Used by
setfdprm. See the setfdprm manual page for more information.
/etc/fstab
Lists the filesystems mounted automatically at startup by the mount ­a command (in /etc/rc or
equivalent startup file). Under Linux, also contains information about swap areas used automatically
by swapon ­a. See the section called Mounting and unmounting in Chapter 4 and the mount
manual page for more information.
/etc/group
23

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
Similar to /etc/passwd, but describes groups instead of users. See the group manual page for
more information.
/etc/inittab
Configuration file for init.
/etc/issue
Output by getty before the login prompt. Usually contains a short description or welcoming
message to the system. The contents are up to the system administrator.
/etc/magic
The configuration file for file. Contains the descriptions of various file formats based on which file
guesses the type of the file. See the magic and file manual pages for more information.
/etc/motd
The message of the day, automatically output after a successful login. Contents are up to the system
administrator. Often used for getting information to every user, such as warnings about planned
downtimes.
/etc/mtab
List of currently mounted filesystems. Initially set up by the bootup scripts, and updated
automatically by the mount command. Used when a list of mounted filesystems is needed, e.g., by
the df command.
/etc/shadow
Shadow password file on systems with shadow password software installed. Shadow passwords
move the encrypted password from /etc/passwd into /etc/shadow; the latter is not readable by
anyone except root. This makes it harder to crack passwords.
/etc/login.defs
24

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
Configuration file for the login command.
/etc/printcap
Like /etc/termcap, but intended for printers. Different syntax.
/etc/profile, /etc/csh.login, /etc/csh.cshrc
Files executed at login or startup time by the Bourne or C shells. These allow the system
administrator to set global defaults for all users. See the manual pages for the respective shells.
/etc/securetty
Identifies secure terminals, i.e., the terminals from which root is allowed to log in. Typically only
the virtual consoles are listed, so that it becomes impossible (or at least harder) to gain superuser
privileges by breaking into a system over a modem or a network.
/etc/shells
Lists trusted shells. The chsh command allows users to change their login shell only to shells listed
in this file. ftpd, the server process that provides FTP services for a machine, will check that the
user's shell is listed in /etc/shells and will not let people log in unles the shell is listed there.
/etc/termcap
The terminal capability database. Describes by what ``escape sequences'' various terminals can be
controlled. Programs are written so that instead of directly outputting an escape sequence that only
works on a particular brand of terminal, they look up the correct sequence to do whatever it is they
want to do in /etc/termcap. As a result most programs work with most kinds of terminals. See
the termcap, curs_termcap, and terminfo manual pages for more information.
The /dev directory
25

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
The /dev directory contains the special device files for all the devices. The device files are named using
special conventions; these are described in the Device list (see XXX). The device files are created during
installation, and later with the /dev/MAKEDEV script. The /dev/MAKEDEV.local is a script written by
the system administrator that creates local­only device files or links (i.e., those that are not part of the
standard MAKEDEV, such as device files for some non­standard device driver).
The /usr filesystem
The /usr filesystem is often large, since all programs are installed there. All files in /usr usually come
from a Linux distribution; locally installed programs and other stuff goes below /usr/local. This
makes it possible to update the system from a new version of the distribution, or even a completely new
distribution, without having to install all programs again. Some of the subdirectories of /usr are listed
below (some of the less important directories have been dropped; see the FSSTND for more
information).
/usr/X11R6
The X Window System, all files. To simplify the development and installation of X, the X files have
not been integrated into the rest of the system. There is a directory tree below /usr/X11R6 similar
to that below /usr itself.
/usr/X386
Similar to /usr/X11R6, but for X11 Release 5.
/usr/bin
Almost all user commands. Some commands are in /bin or in /usr/local/bin.
/usr/sbin
System administration commands that are not needed on the root filesystem, e.g., most server
programs.
/usr/man, /usr/info, /usr/doc
26

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
Manual pages, GNU Info documents, and miscellaneous other documentation files, respectively.
/usr/include
Header files for the C programming language. This should actually be below /usr/lib for
consistency, but the tradition is overwhelmingly in support for this name.
/usr/lib
Unchanging data files for programs and subsystems, including some site­wide configuration files.
The name lib comes from library; originally libraries of programming subroutines were stored in
/usr/lib.
/usr/local
The place for locally installed software and other files.
The /var filesystem
The /var contains data that is changed when the system is running normally. It is specific for each
system, i.e., not shared over the network with other computers.
/var/catman
A cache for man pages that are formatted on demand. The source for manual pages is usually stored
in /usr/man/man*; some manual pages might come with a pre­formatted version, which is stored
in /usr/man/cat*. Other manual pages need to be formatted when they are first viewed; the
formatted version is then stored in /var/man so that the next person to view the same page won't
have to wait for it to be formatted. (/var/catman is often cleaned in the same way temporary
directories are cleaned.)
/var/lib
Files that change while the system is running normally.
27

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
/var/local
Variable data for programs that are installed in /usr/local (i.e., programs that have been installed
by the system administrator). Note that even locally installed programs should use the other /var
directories if they are appropriate, e.g., /var/lock.
/var/lock
Lock files. Many programs follow a convention to create a lock file in /var/lock to indicate that
they are using a particular device or file. Other programs will notice the lock file and won't attempt
to use the device or file.
/var/log
Log files from various programs, especially login (/var/log/wtmp, which logs all logins and
logouts into the system) and syslog (/var/log/messages, where all kernel and system program
message are usually stored). Files in /var/log can often grow indefinitely, and may require
cleaning at regular intervals.
/var/run
Files that contain information about the system that is valid until the system is next booted. For
example, /var/run/utmp contains information about people currently logged in.
/var/spool
Directories for mail, news, printer queues, and other queued work. Each different spool has its own
subdirectory below /var/spool, e.g., the mailboxes of the users are in /var/spool/mail.
/var/tmp
Temporary files that are large or that need to exist for a longer time than what is allowed for /tmp.
(Although the system administrator might not allow very old files in /var/tmp either.)
28

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
The /proc filesystem
The /proc filesystem contains a illusionary filesystem. It does not exist on a disk. Instead, the kernel
creates it in memory. It is used to provide information about the system (originally about processes,
hence the name). Some of the more important files and directories are explained below. The /proc
filesystem is described in more detail in the proc manual page.
/proc/1
A directory with information about process number 1. Each process has a directory below /proc
with the name being its process identification number.
/proc/cpuinfo
Information about the processor, such as its type, make, model, and perfomance.
/proc/devices
List of device drivers configured into the currently running kernel.
/proc/dma
Shows which DMA channels are being used at the moment.
/proc/filesystems
Filesystems configured into the kernel.
/proc/interrupts
Shows which interrupts are in use, and how many of each there have been.
/proc/ioports
Which I/O ports are in use at the moment.
29

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
/proc/kcore
An image of the physical memory of the system. This is exactly the same size as your physical
memory, but does not really take up that much memory; it is generated on the fly as programs access
it. (Remember: unless you copy it elsewhere, nothing under /proc takes up any disk space at all.)
/proc/kmsg
Messages output by the kernel. These are also routed to syslog.
/proc/ksyms
Symbol table for the kernel.
/proc/loadavg
The `load average' of the system; three meaningless indicators of how much work the system has to
do at the moment.
/proc/meminfo
Information about memory usage, both physical and swap.
/proc/modules
Which kernel modules are loaded at the moment.
/proc/net
Status information about network protocols.
/proc/self
A symbolic link to the process directory of the program that is looking at /proc. When two
processes look at /proc, they get different links. This is mainly a convenience to make it easier for
programs to get at their process directory.
30

Chapter 3. Overview of the Directory Tree
/proc/stat
Various statistics about the system, such as the number of page faults since the system was booted.
/proc/uptime
The time the system has been up.
/proc/version
The kernel version.
Note that while the above files tend to be easily readable text files, they can sometimes be formatted in a
way that is not easily digestable. There are many commands that do little more than read the above files
and format them for easier understanding. For example, the free program reads /proc/meminfo and
converts the amounts given in bytes to kilobytes (and adds a little more information, as well).
31

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage
Media
``On a clear disk you can seek forever. ''
When you install or upgrade your system, you need to do a fair amount of work on your disks. You have
to make filesystems on your disks so that files can be stored on them and reserve space for the different
parts of your system.
This chapter explains all these initial activities. Usually, once you get your system set up, you won't have
to go through the work again, except for using floppies. You'll need to come back to this chapter if you
add a new disk or want to fine­tune your disk usage.
The basic tasks in administering disks are:
. Format your disk. This does various things to prepare it for use, such as checking for bad sectors.
(Formatting is nowadays not necessary for most hard disks.)
. Partition a hard disk, if you want to use it for several activities that aren't supposed to interfere with
one another. One reason for partitioning is to store different operating systems on the same disk.
Another reason is to keep user files separate from system files, which simplifies back­ups and helps
protect the system files from corruption.
. Make a filesystem (of a suitable type) on each disk or partition. The disk means nothing to Linux until
you make a filesystem; then files can be created and accessed on it.
. Mount different filesystems to form a single tree structure, either automatically, or manually as
needed. (Manually mounted filesystems usually need to be unmounted manually as well.)
Chapter 5 contains information about virtual memory and disk caching, of which you also need to be
aware when using disks.
Two kinds of devices
UNIX, and therefore Linux, recognizes two different kinds of device: random­access block devices (such
as disks), and character devices (such as tapes and serial lines), some of which may be serial, and some
random­access. Each supported device is represented in the filesystem as a device file. When you read or
write a device file, the data comes from or goes to the device it represents. This way no special programs
32

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
(and no special application programming methodology, such as catching interrupts or polling a serial
port) are necessary to access devices; for example, to send a file to the printer, one could just say
$ cat filename > /dev/lp1
$
and the contents of the file are printed (the file must, of course, be in a form that the printer understands).
However, since it is not a good idea to have several people cat their files to the printer at the same time,
one usually uses a special program to send the files to be printed (usually lpr). This program makes sure
that only one file is being printed at a time, and will automatically send files to the printer as soon as it
finishes with the previous file. Something similar is needed for most devices. In fact, one seldom needs to
worry about device files at all.
Since devices show up as files in the filesystem (in the /dev directory), it is easy to see just what device
files exist, using ls or another suitable command. In the output of ls ­l, the first column contains the type
of the file and its permissions. For example, inspecting a serial device gives on my system
$ ls ­l /dev/cua0
crw­rw­rw­ 1 root uucp 5, 64 Nov 30 1993 /dev/cua0
$
The first character in the first column, i.e., `c' in crw­rw­rw­ above, tells an informed user the type of
the file, in this case a character device. For ordinary files, the first character is `­', for directories it is `d',
and for block devices `b'; see the ls man page for further information.
Note that usually all device files exist even though the device itself might be not be installed. So just
because you have a file /dev/sda, it doesn't mean that you really do have an SCSI hard disk. Having all
the device files makes the installation programs simpler, and makes it easier to add new hardware (there
is no need to find out the correct parameters for and create the device files for the new device).
Hard disks
This subsection introduces terminology related to hard disks. If you already know the terms and
concepts, you can skip this subsection.
See Figure 4­1 for a schematic picture of the important parts in a hard disk. A hard disk consists of one
or more circular platters, 1 of which either or both surfaces are coated with a magnetic substance used for
recording the data. For each surface, there is a read­write head that examines or alters the recorded data.
The platters rotate on a common axis; a typical rotation speed is 3600 rotations per minute, although
high­performance hard disks have higher speeds. The heads move along the radius of the platters; this
movement combined with the rotation of the platters allows the head to access all parts of the surfaces.
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Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
The processor (CPU) and the actual disk communicate through a disk controller. This relieves the rest of
the computer from knowing how to use the drive, since the controllers for different types of disks can be
made to use the same interface towards the rest of the computer. Therefore, the computer can say just
``hey disk, gimme what I want'', instead of a long and complex series of electric signals to move the head
to the proper location and waiting for the correct position to come under the head and doing all the other
unpleasant stuff necessary. (In reality, the interface to the controller is still complex, but much less so
than it would otherwise be.) The controller can also do some other stuff, such as caching, or automatic
bad sector replacement.
The above is usually all one needs to understand about the hardware. There is also a bunch of other stuff,
such as the motor that rotates the platters and moves the heads, and the electronics that control the
operation of the mechanical parts, but that is mostly not relevant for understanding the working principle
of a hard disk.
The surfaces are usually divided into concentric rings, called tracks, and these in turn are divided into
sectors. This division is used to specify locations on the hard disk and to allocate disk space to files. To
find a given place on the hard disk, one might say ``surface 3, track 5, sector 7''. Usually the number of
sectors is the same for all tracks, but some hard disks put more sectors in outer tracks (all sectors are of
the same physical size, so more of them fit in the longer outer tracks). Typically, a sector will hold 512
bytes of data. The disk itself can't handle smaller amounts of data than one sector.
34

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Figure 4­1. A schematic picture of a hard disk.
From above
From the side
Rotation
Track
Sector
Read/write head
Cylinder
Platter
Surfaces
35

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Each surface is divided into tracks (and sectors) in the same way. This means that when the head for one
surface is on a track, the heads for the other surfaces are also on the corresponding tracks. All the
corresponding tracks taken together are called a cylinder. It takes time to move the heads from one track
(cylinder) to another, so by placing the data that is often accessed together (say, a file) so that it is within
one cylinder, it is not necessary to move the heads to read all of it. This improves performance. It is not
always possible to place files like this; files that are stored in several places on the disk are called
fragmented.
The number of surfaces (or heads, which is the same thing), cylinders, and sectors vary a lot; the
specification of the number of each is called the geometry of a hard disk. The geometry is usually stored
in a special, battery­powered memory location called the CMOS RAM, from where the operating system
can fetch it during bootup or driver initialization.
Unfortunately, the BIOS 2 has a design limitation, which makes it impossible to specify a track number
that is larger than 1024 in the CMOS RAM, which is too little for a large hard disk. To overcome this, the
hard disk controller lies about the geometry, and translates the addresses given by the computer into
something that fits reality. For example, a hard disk might have 8 heads, 2048 tracks, and 35 sectors per
track. 3 Its controller could lie to the computer and claim that it has 16 heads, 1024 tracks, and 35 sectors
per track, thus not exceeding the limit on tracks, and translates the address that the computer gives it by
halving the head number, and doubling the track number. The math can be more complicated in reality,
because the numbers are not as nice as here (but again, the details are not relevant for understanding the
principle). This translation distorts the operating system's view of how the disk is organized, thus making
it impractical to use the all­data­on­one­cylinder trick to boost performance.
The translation is only a problem for IDE disks. SCSI disks use a sequential sector number (i.e., the
controller translates a sequential sector number to a head, cylinder, and sector triplet), and a completely
different method for the CPU to talk with the controller, so they are insulated from the problem. Note,
however, that the computer might not know the real geometry of an SCSI disk either.
Since Linux often will not know the real geometry of a disk, its filesystems don't even try to keep files
within a single cylinder. Instead, it tries to assign sequentially numbered sectors to files, which almost
always gives similar performance. The issue is further complicated by on­controller caches, and
automatic prefetches done by the controller.
Each hard disk is represented by a separate device file. There can (usually) be only two or four IDE hard
disks. These are known as /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, /dev/hdc, and /dev/hdd, respectively. SCSI hard
disks are known as /dev/sda, /dev/sdb, and so on. Similar naming conventions exist for other hard
disk types; see XXX (device list) for more information. Note that the device files for the hard disks give
access to the entire disk, with no regard to partitions (which will be discussed below), and it's easy to
mess up the partitions or the data in them if you aren't careful. The disks' device files are usually used
only to get access to the master boot record (which will also be discussed below).
36

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Floppies
A floppy disk consists of a flexible membrane covered on one or both sides with similar magnetic
substance as a hard disk. The floppy disk itself doesn't have a read­write head, that is included in the
drive. A floppy corresponds to one platter in a hard disk, but is removable and one drive can be used to
access different floppies, whereas the hard disk is one indivisible unit.
Like a hard disk, a floppy is divided into tracks and sectors (and the two corresponding tracks on either
side of a floppy form a cylinder), but there are many fewer of them than on a hard disk.
A floppy drive can usually use several different types of disks; for example, a 3.5 inch drive can use both
720 kB and 1.44 MB disks. Since the drive has to operate a bit differently and the operating system must
know how big the disk is, there are many device files for floppy drives, one per combination of drive and
disk type. Therefore, /dev/fd0H1440 is the first floppy drive (fd0), which must be a 3.5 inch drive,
using a 3.5 inch, high density disk (H) of size 1440 kB (1440), i.e., a normal 3.5 inch HD floppy. For
more information on the naming conventions for the floppy devices, see XXX (device list).
The names for floppy drives are complex, however, and Linux therefore has a special floppy device type
that automatically detects the type of the disk in the drive. It works by trying to read the first sector of a
newly inserted floppy using different floppy types until it finds the correct one. This naturally requires
that the floppy is formatted first. The automatic devices are called /dev/fd0, /dev/fd1, and so on.
The parameters the automatic device uses to access a disk can also be set using the program setfdprm.
This can be useful if you need to use disks that do not follow any usual floppy sizes, e.g., if they have an
unusual number of sectors, or if the autodetecting for some reason fails and the proper device file is
missing.
Linux can handle many nonstandard floppy disk formats in addition to all the standard ones. Some of
these require using special formatting programs. We'll skip these disk types for now, but in the mean
time you can examine the /etc/fdprm file. It specifies the settings that setfdprm recognizes.
The operating system must know when a disk has been changed in a floppy drive, for example, in order
to avoid using cached data from the previous disk. Unfortunately, the signal line that is used for this is
sometimes broken, and worse, this won't always be noticeable when using the drive from within
MS­DOS. If you are experiencing weird problems using floppies, this might be the reason. The only way
to correct it is to repair the floppy drive.
CD­ROM's
A CD­ROM drive uses an optically read, plastic coated disk. The information is recorded on the surface
of the disk 4 in small `holes' aligned along a spiral from the center to the edge. The drive directs a laser
beam along the spiral to read the disk. When the laser hits a hole, the laser is reflected in one way; when
37

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
it hits smooth surface, it is reflected in another way. This makes it easy to code bits, and therefore
information. The rest is easy, mere mechanics.
CD­ROM drives are slow compared to hard disks. Whereas a typical hard disk will have an average seek
time less than 15 milliseconds, a fast CD­ROM drive can use tenths of a second for seeks. The actual
data transfer rate is fairly high at hundreds of kilobytes per second. The slowness means that CD­ROM
drives are not as pleasant to use instead of hard disks (some Linux distributions provide `live' filesystems
on CD­ROM's, making it unnecessary to copy the files to the hard disk, making installation easier and
saving a lot of hard disk space), although it is still possible. For installing new software, CD­ROM's are
very good, since it maximum speed is not essential during installation.
There are several ways to arrange data on a CD­ROM. The most popular one is specified by the
international standard ISO 9660. This standard specifies a very minimal filesystem, which is even more
crude than the one MS­DOS uses. On the other hand, it is so minimal that every operating system should
be able to map it to its native system.
For normal UNIX use, the ISO 9660 filesystem is not usable, so an extension to the standard has been
developed, called the Rock Ridge extension. Rock Ridge allows longer filenames, symbolic links, and a
lot of other goodies, making a CD­ROM look more or less like any contemporary UNIX filesystem.
Even better, a Rock Ridge filesystem is still a valid ISO 9660 filesystem, making it usable by non­UNIX
systems as well. Linux supports both ISO 9660 and the Rock Ridge extensions; the extensions are
recognized and used automatically.
The filesystem is only half the battle, however. Most CD­ROM's contain data that requires a special
program to access, and most of these programs do not run under Linux (except, possibly, under dosemu,
the Linux MS­DOS emulator).
A CD­ROM drive is accessed via the corresponding device file. There are several ways to connect a
CD­ROM drive to the computer: via SCSI, via a sound card, or via EIDE. The hardware hacking needed
to do this is outside the scope of this book, but the type of connection decides the device file. See XXX
(device­list) for enlightment.
Tapes
A tape drive uses a tape, similar 5 to cassettes used for music. A tape is serial in nature, which means that
in order to get to any given part of it, you first have to go through all the parts in between. A disk can be
accessed randomly, i.e., you can jump directly to any place on the disk. The serial access of tapes makes
them slow.
On the other hand, tapes are relatively cheap to make, since they do not need to be fast. They can also
easily be made quite long, and can therefore contain a large amount of data. This makes tapes very
suitable for things like archiving and backups, which do not require large speeds, but benefit from low
38

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
costs and large storage capacities.
Formatting
Formatting is the process of writing marks on the magnetic media that are used to mark tracks and
sectors. Before a disk is formatted, its magnetic surface is a complete mess of magnetic signals. When it
is formatted, some order is brought into the chaos by essentially drawing lines where the tracks go, and
where they are divided into sectors. The actual details are not quite exactly like this, but that is irrelevant.
What is important is that a disk cannot be used unless it has been formatted.
The terminology is a bit confusing here: in MS­DOS, the word formatting is used to cover also the
process of creating a filesystem (which will be discussed below). There, the two processes are often
combined, especially for floppies. When the distinction needs to be made, the real formatting is called
low­level formatting, while making the filesystem is called high­level formatting. In UNIX circles, the
two are called formatting and making a filesystem, so that's what is used in this book as well.
For IDE and some SCSI disks the formatting is actually done at the factory and doesn't need to be
repeated; hence most people rarely need to worry about it. In fact, formatting a hard disk can cause it to
work less well, for example because a disk might need to be formatted in some very special way to allow
automatic bad sector replacement to work.
Disks that need to be or can be formatted often require a special program anyway, because the interface
to the formatting logic inside the drive is different from drive to drive. The formatting program is often
either on the controller BIOS, or is supplied as an MS­DOS program; neither of these can easily be used
from within Linux.
During formatting one might encounter bad spots on the disk, called bad blocks or bad sectors. These are
sometimes handled by the drive itself, but even then, if more of them develop, something needs to be
done to avoid using those parts of the disk. The logic to do this is built into the filesystem; how to add the
information into the filesystem is described below. Alternatively, one might create a small partition that
covers just the bad part of the disk; this approach might be a good idea if the bad spot is very large, since
filesystems can sometimes have trouble with very large bad areas.
Floppies are formatted with fdformat. The floppy device file to use is given as the parameter. For
example, the following command would format a high density, 3.5 inch floppy in the first floppy drive:
$ fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
Double­sided, 80 tracks, 18 sec/track. Total capacity 1440 kB.
Formatting ... done
Verifying ... done
$
39

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Note that if you want to use an autodetecting device (e.g., /dev/fd0), you must set the parameters of the
device with setfdprm first. To achieve the same effect as above, one would have to do the following:
$ setfdprm /dev/fd0 1440/1440
$ fdformat /dev/fd0
Double­sided, 80 tracks, 18 sec/track. Total capacity 1440 kB.
Formatting ... done
Verifying ... done
$
It is usually more convenient to choose the correct device file that matches the type of the floppy. Note
that it is unwise to format floppies to contain more information than what they are designed for.
fdformat will also validate the floppy, i.e., check it for bad blocks. It will try a bad block several times
(you can usually hear this, the drive noise changes dramatically). If the floppy is only marginally bad
(due to dirt on the read/write head, some errors are false signals), fdformat won't complain, but a real
error will abort the validation process. The kernel will print log messages for each I/O error it finds; these
will go to the console or, if syslog is being used, to the file /usr/log/messages. fdformat itself won't
tell where the error is (one usually doesn't care, floppies are cheap enough that a bad one is automatically
thrown away).
$ fdformat /dev/fd0H1440
Double­sided, 80 tracks, 18 sec/track. Total capacity 1440 kB.
Formatting ... done
Verifying ... read: Unknown error
$
The badblocks command can be used to search any disk or partition for bad blocks (including a floppy).
It does not format the disk, so it can be used to check even existing filesystems. The example below
checks a 3.5 inch floppy with two bad blocks.
$ badblocks /dev/fd0H1440 1440
718
719
$
badblocks outputs the block numbers of the bad blocks it finds. Most filesystems can avoid such bad
blocks. They maintain a list of known bad blocks, which is initialized when the filesystem is made, and
can be modified later. The initial search for bad blocks can be done by the mkfs command (which
initializes the filesystem), but later checks should be done with badblocks and the new blocks should be
added with fsck. We'll describe mkfs and fsck later.
Many modern disks automatically notice bad blocks, and attempt to fix them by using a special, reserved
good block instead. This is invisible to the operating system. This feature should be documented in the
40

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
disk's manual, if you're curious if it is happening. Even such disks can fail, if the number of bad blocks
grows too large, although chances are that by then the disk will be so rotten as to be unusable.
Partitions
A hard disk can be divided into several partitions. Each partition functions as if it were a separate hard
disk. The idea is that if you have one hard disk, and want to have, say, two operating systems on it, you
can divide the disk into two partitions. Each operating system uses its partition as it wishes and doesn't
touch the other one's. This way the two operating systems can co­exist peacefully on the same hard disk.
Without partitions one would have to buy a hard disk for each operating system.
Floppies are not partitioned. There is no technical reason against this, but since they're so small,
partitions would be useful only very rarely. CD­ROM's are usually also not partitioned, since it's easier
to use them as one big disk, and there is seldom a need to have several operating systems on one.
The MBR, boot sectors and partition table
The information about how a hard disk has been partitioned is stored in its first sector (that is, the first
sector of the first track on the first disk surface). The first sector is the master boot record (MBR) of the
disk; this is the sector that the BIOS reads in and starts when the machine is first booted. The master boot
record contains a small program that reads the partition table, checks which partition is active (that is,
marked bootable), and reads the first sector of that partition, the partition's boot sector (the MBR is also
a boot sector, but it has a special status and therefore a special name). This boot sector contains another
small program that reads the first part of the operating system stored on that partition (assuming it is
bootable), and then starts it.
The partitioning scheme is not built into the hardware, or even into the BIOS. It is only a convention that
many operating systems follow. Not all operating systems do follow it, but they are the exceptions. Some
operating systems support partitions, but they occupy one partition on the hard disk, and use their
internal partitioning method within that partition. The latter type exists peacefully with other operating
systems (including Linux), and does not require any special measures, but an operating system that
doesn't support partitions cannot co­exist on the same disk with any other operating system.
As a safety precaution, it is a good idea to write down the partition table on a piece of paper, so that if it
ever corrupts you don't have to lose all your files. (A bad partition table can be fixed with fdisk). The
relevant information is given by the fdisk ­l command:
$ fdisk ­l /dev/hda
Disk /dev/hda: 15 heads, 57 sectors, 790 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 855 * 512 bytes
41

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Device Boot Begin Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 1 24 10231+ 82 Linux swap
/dev/hda2 25 25 48 10260 83 Linux native
/dev/hda3 49 49 408 153900 83 Linux native
/dev/hda4 409 409 790 163305 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 409 409 744 143611+ 83 Linux native
/dev/hda6 745 745 790 19636+ 83 Linux native
$
Extended and logical partitions
The original partitioning scheme for PC hard disks allowed only four partitions. This quickly turned out
to be too little in real life, partly because some people want more than four operating systems (Linux,
MS­DOS, OS/2, Minix, FreeBSD, NetBSD, or Windows/NT, to name a few), but primarily because
sometimes it is a good idea to have several partitions for one operating system. For example, swap space
is usually best put in its own partition for Linux instead of in the main Linux partition for reasons of
speed (see below).
To overcome this design problem, extended partitions were invented. This trick allows partitioning a
primary partition into sub­partitions. The primary partition thus subdivided is the extended partition; the
subpartitions are logical partitions. They behave like primary 6 partitions, but are created differently.
There is no speed difference between them.
The partition structure of a hard disk might look like that in Figure 4­2. The disk is divided into three
primary partitions, the second of which is divided into two logical partitions. Part of the disk is not
partitioned at all. The disk as a whole and each primary partition has a boot sector.
42

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Figure 4­2. A sample hard disk partitioning.
Logical
partition
Logical
partition
Extended
partition
Primary
partition
Primary
partition
MBR
Boot sector
Data area
of partition
Boot sector
Boot sector
Unused disk space
Data area
Data area
Data area
Unused boot sector
Unused boot sector
Partition types
The partition tables (the one in the MBR, and the ones for extended partitions) contain one byte per
partition that identifies the type of that partition. This attempts to identify the operating system that uses
the partition, or what it uses it for. The purpose is to make it possible to avoid having two operating
systems accidentally using the same partition. However, in reality, operating systems do not really care
about the partition type byte; e.g., Linux doesn't care at all what it is. Worse, some of them use it
incorrectly; e.g., at least some versions of DR­DOS ignore the most significant bit of the byte, while
others don't.
There is no standardization agency to specify what each byte value means, but some commonly accepted
ones are included in in Table 4­1. The same list is available in the Linux fdisk program.
Table 4­1. Partition types (from the Linux fdisk program).
0 Empty 40 Venix 80286 94 Amoeba BBT
43

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
1 DOS 12­bit FAT 51 Novell? a5 BSD/386
2 XENIX root 52 Microport b7 BSDI fs
3 XENIX usr 63 GNU HURD b8 BSDI swap
4 DOS 16­bitf
<32M
64 Novell c7 Syrinx
5 Extended 75 PC/IX db CP/M
6 DOS 16­bit
>=32M
80 Old MINIX e1 DOS access
7 OS/2 HPFS 81 Linux/MINIX e3 DOS R/O
8 AIX 82 Linux swap f2 DOS secondary
9 AIX bootable 83 Linux native ff BBT
a OS/2 Boot
Manag
93 Amoeba
Partitioning a hard disk
There are many programs for creating and removing partitions. Most operating systems have their own,
and it can be a good idea to use each operating system's own, just in case it does something unusual that
the others can't. Many of the programs are called fdisk, including the Linux one, or variations thereof.
Details on using the Linux fdisk are given on its man page. The cfdisk command is similar to fdisk, but
has a nicer (full screen) user interface.
When using IDE disks, the boot partition (the partition with the bootable kernel image files) must be
completely within the first 1024 cylinders. This is because the disk is used via the BIOS during boot
(before the system goes into protected mode), and BIOS can't handle more than 1024 cylinders. It is
sometimes possible to use a boot partition that is only partly within the first 1024 cylinders. This works
as long as all the files that are read with the BIOS are within the first 1024 cylinders. Since this is
difficult to arrange, it is a very bad idea to do it; you never know when a kernel update or disk
defragmentation will result in an unbootable system. Therefore, make sure your boot partition is
completely within the first 1024 cylinders.
Some newer versions of the BIOS and IDE disks can, in fact, handle disks with more than 1024
cylinders. If you have such a system, you can forget about the problem; if you aren't quite sure of it, put
it within the first 1024 cylinders.
Each partition should have an even number of sectors, since the Linux filesystems use a 1 kilobyte block
size, i.e., two sectors. An odd number of sectors will result in the last sector being unused. This won't
44

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
result in any problems, but it is ugly, and some versions of fdisk will warn about it.
Changing a partition's size usually requires first backing up everything you want to save from that
partition (preferably the whole disk, just in case), deleting the partition, creating new partition, then
restoring everything to the new partition. If the partition is growing, you may need to adjust the sizes
(and backup and restore) of the adjoining partitions as well.
Since changing partition sizes is painful, it is preferable to get the partitions right the first time, or have
an effective and easy to use backup system. If you're installing from a media that does not require much
human intervention (say, from CD­ROM, as opposed to floppies), it is often easy to play with different
configuration at first. Since you don't already have data to back up, it is not so painful to modify partition
sizes several times.
There is a program for MS­DOS, called fips, which resizes an MS­DOS partition without requiring the
backup and restore, but for other filesystems it is still necessary.
Device files and partitions
Each partition and extended partition has its own device file. The naming convention for these files is that
a partition's number is appended after the name of the whole disk, with the convention that 1­4 are
primary partitions (regardless of how many primary partitions there are) and 5­8 are logical partitions
(regardless of within which primary partition they reside). For example, /dev/hda1 is the first primary
partition on the first IDE hard disk, and /dev/sdb7 is the third extended partition on the second SCSI
hard disk. The device list in XXX (device list) gives more information.
Filesystems
What are filesystems?
A filesystem is the methods and data structures that an operating system uses to keep track of files on a
disk or partition; that is, the way the files are organized on the disk. The word is also used to refer to a
partition or disk that is used to store the files or the type of the filesystem. Thus, one might say ``I have
two filesystems'' meaning one has two partitions on which one stores files, or that one is using the
``extended filesystem'', meaning the type of the filesystem.
The difference between a disk or partition and the filesystem it contains is important. A few programs
(including, reasonably enough, programs that create filesystems) operate directly on the raw sectors of a
disk or partition; if there is an existing file system there it will be destroyed or seriously corrupted. Most
45

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
programs operate on a filesystem, and therefore won't work on a partition that doesn't contain one (or
that contains one of the wrong type).
Before a partition or disk can be used as a filesystem, it needs to be initialized, and the bookkeeping data
structures need to be written to the disk. This process is called making a filesystem.
Most UNIX filesystem types have a similar general structure, although the exact details vary quite a bit.
The central concepts are superblock, inode, data block, directory block, and indirection block. The
superblock contains information about the filesystem as a whole, such as its size (the exact information
here depends on the filesystem). An inode contains all information about a file, except its name. The
name is stored in the directory, together with the number of the inode. A directory entry consists of a
filename and the number of the inode which represents the file. The inode contains the numbers of
several data blocks, which are used to store the data in the file. There is space only for a few data block
numbers in the inode, however, and if more are needed, more space for pointers to the data blocks is
allocated dynamically. These dynamically allocated blocks are indirect blocks; the name indicates that in
order to find the data block, one has to find its number in the indirect block first.
UNIX filesystems usually allow one to create a hole in a file (this is done with lseek; check the manual
page), which means that the filesystem just pretends that at a particular place in the file there is just zero
bytes, but no actual disk sectors are reserved for that place in the file (this means that the file will use a
bit less disk space). This happens especially often for small binaries, Linux shared libraries, some
databases, and a few other special cases. (Holes are implemented by storing a special value as the
address of the data block in the indirect block or inode. This special address means that no data block is
allocated for that part of the file, ergo, there is a hole in the file.)
Holes are moderately useful. On the author's system, a simple measurement showed a potential for about
4 MB of savings through holes of about 200 MB total used disk space. That system, however, contains
relatively few programs and no database files.
Filesystems galore
Linux supports several types of filesystems. As of this writing the most important ones are:
minix
The oldest, presumed to be the most reliable, but quite limited in features (some time stamps are
missing, at most 30 character filenames) and restricted in capabilities (at most 64 MB per
filesystem).
xia
46

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
A modified version of the minix filesystem that lifts the limits on the filenames and filesystem sizes,
but does not otherwise introduce new features. It is not very popular, but is reported to work very
well.
ext2
The most featureful of the native Linux filesystems, currently also the most popular one. It is
designed to be easily upwards compatible, so that new versions of the filesystem code do not require
re­making the existing filesystems.
ext
An older version of ext2 that wasn't upwards compatible. It is hardly ever used in new installations
any more, and most people have converted to ext2.
In addition, support for several foreign filesystem exists, to make it easier to exchange files with other
operating systems. These foreign filesystems work just like native ones, except that they may be lacking
in some usual UNIX features, or have curious limitations, or other oddities.
msdos
Compatibility with MS­DOS (and OS/2 and Windows NT) FAT filesystems.
usmdos
Extends the msdos filesystem driver under Linux to get long filenames, owners, permissions, links,
and device files. This allows a normal msdos filesystem to be used as if it were a Linux one, thus
removing the need for a separate partition for Linux.
iso9660
The standard CD­ROM filesystem; the popular Rock Ridge extension to the CD­ROM standard that
allows longer file names is supported automatically.
nfs
47

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
A networked filesystem that allows sharing a filesystem between many computers to allow easy
access to the files from all of them.
hpfs
The OS/2 filesystem.
sysv
SystemV/386, Coherent, and Xenix filesystems.
The choice of filesystem to use depends on the situation. If compatibility or other reasons make one of
the non­native filesystems necessary, then that one must be used. If one can choose freely, then it is
probably wisest to use ext2, since it has all the features but does not suffer from lack of performance.
There is also the proc filesystem, usually accessible as the /proc directory, which is not really a
filesystem at all, even though it looks like one. The proc filesystem makes it easy to access certain kernel
data structures, such as the process list (hence the name). It makes these data structures look like a
filesystem, and that filesystem can be manipulated with all the usual file tools. For example, to get a
listing of all processes one might use the command
$ ls ­l /proc
total 0
dr­xr­xr­x 4 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 1
dr­xr­xr­x 4 liw users 0 Jan 31 20:37 63
dr­xr­xr­x 4 liw users 0 Jan 31 20:37 94
dr­xr­xr­x 4 liw users 0 Jan 31 20:37 95
dr­xr­xr­x 4 root users 0 Jan 31 20:37 98
dr­xr­xr­x 4 liw users 0 Jan 31 20:37 99
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 devices
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 dma
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 filesystems
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 interrupts
­r­­­­­ 1 root root 8654848 Jan 31 20:37 kcore
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 11:50 kmsg
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 ksyms
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 11:51 loadavg
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 meminfo
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 modules
dr­xr­xr­x 2 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 net
dr­xr­xr­x 4 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 self
48

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 stat
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 uptime
­r­r­r­ 1 root root 0 Jan 31 20:37 version
$
(There will be a few extra files that don't correspond to processes, though. The above example has been
shortened.)
Note that even though it is called a filesystem, no part of the proc filesystem touches any disk. It exists
only in the kernel's imagination. Whenever anyone tries to look at any part of the proc filesystem, the
kernel makes it look as if the part existed somewhere, even though it doesn't. So, even though there is a
multi­megabyte /proc/kcore file, it doesn't take any disk space.
Which filesystem should be used?
There is usually little point in using many different filesystems. Currently, ext2fs is the most popular one,
and it is probably the wisest choice. Depending on the overhead for bookkeeping structures, speed,
(perceived) reliability, compatibility, and various other reasons, it may be advisable to use another file
system. This needs to be decided on a case­by­case basis.
Creating a filesystem
Filesystems are created, i.e., initialized, with the mkfs command. There is actually a separate program
for each filesystem type. mkfs is just a front end that runs the appropriate program depending on the
desired filesystem type. The type is selected with the ­t fstype option.
The programs called by mkfs have slightly different command line interfaces. The common and most
important options are summarized below; see the manual pages for more.
­t fstype
Select the type of the filesystem.
­c
Search for bad blocks and initialize the bad block list accordingly.
­l filename
49

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Read the initial bad block list from the name file.
To create an ext2 filesystem on a floppy, one would give the following commands:
$ fdformat ­n /dev/fd0H1440
Double­sided, 80 tracks, 18 sec/track. Total capacity 1440 kB.
Formatting ... done
$ badblocks /dev/fd0H1440 1440 $>$ bad­blocks
$ mkfs ­t ext2 ­l bad­blocks /dev/fd0H1440
mke2fs 0.5a, 5­Apr­94 for EXT2 FS 0.5, 94/03/10
360 inodes, 1440 blocks
72 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
1 block group
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
360 inodes per group
Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
$
First, the floppy was formatted (the ­n option prevents validation, i.e., bad block checking). Then bad
blocks were searched with badblocks, with the output redirected to a file, bad­blocks. Finally, the
filesystem was created, with the bad block list initialized by whatever badblocks found.
The ­c option could have been used with mkfs instead of badblocks and a separate file. The example
below does that.
$ mkfs ­t ext2 ­c /dev/fd0H1440
mke2fs 0.5a, 5­Apr­94 for EXT2 FS 0.5, 94/03/10
360 inodes, 1440 blocks
72 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
1 block group
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
360 inodes per group
Checking for bad blocks (read­only test): done
Writing inode tables: done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done
50

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
$
The ­c option is more convenient than a separate use of badblocks, but badblocks is necessary for
checking after the filesystem has been created.
The process to prepare filesystems on hard disks or partitions is the same as for floppies, except that the
formatting isn't needed.
Mounting and unmounting
Before one can use a filesystem, it has to be mounted. The operating system then does various
bookkeeping things to make sure that everything works. Since all files in UNIX are in a single directory
tree, the mount operation will make it look like the contents of the new filesystem are the contents of an
existing subdirectory in some already mounted filesystem.
For example, Figure 4­3 shows three separate filesystems, each with their own root directory. When the
last two filesystems are mounted below /home and /usr, respectively, on the first filesystem, we can get
a single directory tree, as in Figure 4­4.
Figure 4­3. Three separate filesystems.
liw bin lib
/
/
abc ftp etc
bin dev home etc lib usr
/
51

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Figure 4­4. /home and /usr have been mounted.
liw
abc ftp bin lib
etc
bin dev home etc lib usr
/
The mounts could be done as in the following example:
$ mount /dev/hda2 /home
$ mount /dev/hda3 /usr
$
The mount command takes two arguments. The first one is the device file corresponding to the disk or
partition containing the filesystem. The second one is the directory below which it will be mounted.
After these commands the contents of the two filesystems look just like the contents of the /home and
/usr directories, respectively. One would then say that ``/dev/hda2 is mounted on /home'', and
similarly for /usr. To look at either filesystem, one would look at the contents of the directory on which
it has been mounted, just as if it were any other directory. Note the difference between the device file,
/dev/hda2, and the mounted­on directory, /home. The device file gives access to the raw contents of
the disk, the mounted­on directory gives access to the files on the disk. The mounted­on directory is
called the mount point.
Linux supports many filesystem types. mount tries to guess the type of the filesystem. You can also use
the ­t fstype option to specify the type directly; this is sometimes necessary, since the heuristics
mount uses do not always work. For example, to mount an MS­DOS floppy, you could use the following
command:
$ mount ­t msdos /dev/fd0 /floppy
$
The mounted­on directory need not be empty, although it must exist. Any files in it, however, will be
inaccessible by name while the filesystem is mounted. (Any files that have already been opened will still
be accessible. Files that have hard links from other directories can be accessed using those names.) There
is no harm done with this, and it can even be useful. For instance, some people like to have /tmp and
52

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
/var/tmp synonymous, and make /tmp be a symbolic link to /var/tmp. When the system is booted,
before the /var filesystem is mounted, a /var/tmp directory residing on the root filesystem is used
instead. When /var is mounted, it will make the /var/tmp directory on the root filesystem
inaccessible. If /var/tmp didn't exist on the root filesystem, it would be impossible to use temporary
files before mounting /var.
If you don't intend to write anything to the filesystem, use the ­r switch for mount to do a readonly
mount. This will make the kernel stop any attempts at writing to the filesystem, and will also stop the
kernel from updating file access times in the inodes. Read­only mounts are necessary for unwritable
media, e.g., CD­ROM's.
The alert reader has already noticed a slight logistical problem. How is the first filesystem (called the
root filesystem, because it contains the root directory) mounted, since it obviously can't be mounted on
another filesystem? Well, the answer is that it is done by magic. 7 The root filesystem is magically
mounted at boot time, and one can rely on it to always be mounted. If the root filesystem can't be
mounted, the system does not boot. The name of the filesystem that is magically mounted as root is
either compiled into the kernel, or set using LILO or rdev.
The root filesystem is usually first mounted readonly. The startup scripts will then run fsck to verify its
validity, and if there are no problems, they will re­mount it so that writes will also be allowed. fsck must
not be run on a mounted filesystem, since any changes to the filesystem while fsck is running will cause
trouble. Since the root filesystem is mounted readonly while it is being checked, fsck can fix any
problems without worry, since the remount operation will flush any metadata that the filesystem keeps in
memory.
On many systems there are other filesystems that should also be mounted automatically at boot time.
These are specified in the /etc/fstab file; see the fstab man page for details on the format. The details
of exactly when the extra filesystems are mounted depend on many factors, and can be configured by
each administrator if need be; see Chapter 6.
When a filesystem no longer needs to be mounted, it can be unmounted with umount. 8 umount takes
one argument: either the device file or the mount point. For example, to unmount the directories of the
previous example, one could use the commands
$ umount /dev/hda2
$ umount /usr
$
See the man page for further instructions on how to use the command. It is imperative that you always
unmount a mounted floppy. Don't just pop the floppy out of the drive! Because of disk caching, the data
is not necessarily written to the floppy until you unmount it, so removing the floppy from the drive too
early might cause the contents to become garbled. If you only read from the floppy, this is not very likely,
but if you write, even accidentally, the result may be catastrophic.
53

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Mounting and unmounting requires super user privileges, i.e., only root can do it. The reason for this is
that if any user can mount a floppy on any directory, then it is rather easy to create a floppy with, say, a
Trojan horse disguised as /bin/sh, or any other often used program. However, it is often necessary to
allow users to use floppies, and there are several ways to do this:
. Give the users the root password. This is obviously bad security, but is the easiest solution. It works
well if there is no need for security anyway, which is the case on many non­networked, personal
systems.
. Use a program such as sudo to allow users to use mount. This is still bad security, but doesn't directly
give super user privileges to everyone. 9
. Make the users use mtools, a package for manipulating MS­DOS filesystems, without mounting them.
This works well if MS­DOS floppies are all that is needed, but is rather awkward otherwise.
. List the floppy devices and their allowable mount points together with the suitable options in
/etc/fstab.
The last alternative can be implemented by adding a line like the following to the /etc/fstab file:
/dev/fd0 /floppy msdos user,noauto 0 0
The columns are: device file to mount, directory to mount on, filesystem type, options, backup frequency
(used by dump), and fsck pass number (to specify the order in which filesystems should be checked
upon boot; 0 means no check).
The noauto option stops this mount to be done automatically when the system is started (i.e., it stops
mount ­a from mounting it). The user option allows any user to mount the filesystem, and, because of
security reasons, disallows execution of programs (normal or setuid) and interpretation of device files
from the mounted filesystem. After this, any user can mount a floppy with an msdos filesystem with the
following command:
$ mount /floppy
$
The floppy can (and needs to, of course) be unmounted with the corresponding umount command.
If you want to provide access to several types of floppies, you need to give several mount points. The
settings can be different for each mount point. For example, to give access to both MS­DOS and ext2
floppies, you could have the following to lines in /etc/fstab:
/dev/fd0 /dosfloppy msdos user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /ext2floppy ext2 user,noauto 0 0
For MS­DOS filesystems (not just floppies), you probably want to restrict access to it by using the uid,
gid, and umask filesystem options, described in detail on the mount manual page. If you aren't careful,
54

Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
mounting an MS­DOS filesystem gives everyone at least read access to the files in it, which is not a good
idea.
Checking filesystem integrity with fsck
Filesystems are complex creatures, and as such, they tend to be somewhat error­prone. A filesystem's
correctness and validity can be checked using the fsck command. It can be instructed to repair any minor
problems it finds, and to alert the user if there any unrepairable problems. Fortunately, the code to
implement filesystems is debugged quite effectively, so there are seldom any problems at all, and they are
usually caused by power failures, failing hardware, or operator errors; for example, by not shutting down
the system properly.
Most systems are setup to run fsck automatically at boot time, so that any errors are detected (and
hopefully corrected) before the system is used. Use of a corrupted filesystem tends to make things worse:
if the data structures are messed up, using the filesystem will probably mess them up even more, resulting
in more data loss. However, fsck can take a while to run on big filesystems, and since errors almost never
occur if the system has been shut down properly, a couple of tricks are used to avoid doing the checks in
such cases. The first is that if the file /etc/fastboot exists, no checks are made. The second is that the
ext2 filesystem has a special marker in its superblock that tells whether the filesystem was unmounted
properly after the previous mount. This allows e2fsck (the version of fsck for the ext2 filesystem) to
avoid checking the filesystem if the flag indicates that the unmount was done (the assumption being that
a proper unmount indicates no problems). Whether the /etc/fastboot trick works on your system
depends on your startup scripts, but the ext2 trick works every time you use e2fsck. It has to be explicitly
bypassed with an option to e2fsck to be avoided. (See the e2fsck man page for details on how.)
The automatic checking only works for the filesystems that are mounted automatically at boot time. Use
fsck manually to check other filesystems, e.g., floppies.
If fsck finds unrepairable problems, you need either in­depth knowlege of how filesystems work in
general, and the type of the corrupt filesystem in particular, or good backups. The latter is easy (although
sometimes tedious) to arrange, the former can sometimes be arranged via a friend, the Linux newsgroups
and mailing lists, or some other source of support, if you don't have the know­how yourself. I'd like to
tell you more about it, but my lack of education and experience in this regard hinders me. The debugfs
program by Theodore T'so should be useful.
fsck must only be run on unmounted filesystems, never on mounted filesystems (with the exception of
the read­only root during startup). This is because it accesses the raw disk, and can therefore modify the
filesystem without the operating system realizing it. There will be trouble, if the operating system is
confused.
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Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Checking for disk errors with badblocks
It can be a good idea to periodically check for bad blocks. This is done with the badblocks command. It
outputs a list of the numbers of all bad blocks it can find. This list can be fed to fsck to be recorded in the
filesystem data structures so that the operating system won't try to use the bad blocks for storing data.
The following example will show how this could be done.
$ badblocks /dev/fd0H1440 1440 > bad­blocks
$ fsck ­t ext2 ­l bad­blocks /dev/fd0H1440
Parallelizing fsck version 0.5a (5­Apr­94)
e2fsck 0.5a, 5­Apr­94 for EXT2 FS 0.5, 94/03/10
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Check reference counts.
Pass 5: Checking group summary information.
/dev/fd0H1440: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
/dev/fd0H1440: 11/360 files, 63/1440 blocks
$
If badblocks reports a block that was already used, e2fsck will try to move the block to another place. If
the block was really bad, not just marginal, the contents of the file may be corrupted.
Fighting fragmentation
When a file is written to disk, it can't always be written in consecutive blocks. A file that is not stored in
consecutive blocks is fragmented. It takes longer to read a fragmented file, since the disk's read­write
head will have to move more. It is desireable to avoid fragmentation, although it is less of a problem in a
system with a good buffer cache with read­ahead.
The ext2 filesystem attempts to keep fragmentation at a minimum, by keeping all blocks in a file close
together, even if they can't be stored in consecutive sectors. Ext2 effectively always allocates the free
block that is nearest to other blocks in a file. For ext2, it is therefore seldom necessary to worry about
fragmentation. There is a program for defragmenting an ext2 filesystem, see XXX (ext2­defrag) in the
bibliography.
There are many MS­DOS defragmentation programs that move blocks around in the filesystem to remove
fragmentation. For other filesystems, defragmentation must be done by backing up the filesystem,
re­creating it, and restoring the files from backups. Backing up a filesystem before defragmening is a
good idea for all filesystems, since many things can go wrong during the defragmentation.
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Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Other tools for all filesystems
Some other tools are also useful for managing filesystems. df shows the free disk space on one or more
filesystems; du shows how much disk space a directory and all its files contain. These can be used to
hunt down disk space wasters.
sync forces all unwritten blocks in the buffer cache (see the section called The buffer cache in Chapter 5)
to be written to disk. It is seldom necessary to do this by hand; the daemon process update does this
automatically. It can be useful in catastrophies, for example if update or its helper process bdflush dies,
or if you must turn off power now and can't wait for update to run.
Other tools for the ext2 filesystem
In addition to the filesystem creator (mke2fs) and checker (e2fsck) accessible directly or via the
filesystem type independent front ends, the ext2 filesystem has some additional tools that can be useful.
tune2fs adjusts filesystem parameters. Some of the more interesting parameters are:
. A maximal mount count. e2fsck enforces a check when filesystem has been mounted too many times,
even if the clean flag is set. For a system that is used for developing or testing the system, it might be a
good idea to reduce this limit.
. A maximal time between checks. e2fsck can also enforce a maximal time between two checks, even if
the clean flag is set, and the filesystem hasn't been mounted very often. This can be disabled, however.
. Number of blocks reserved for root. Ext2 reserves some blocks for root so that if the filesystem fills
up, it is still possible to do system administration without having to delete anything. The reserved
amount is by default 5 percent, which on most disks isn't enough to be wasteful. However, for floppies
there is no point in reserving any blocks.
See the tune2fs manual page for more information.
dumpe2fs shows information about an ext2 filesystem, mostly from the superblock. Figure 4­5 shows a
sample output. Some of the information in the output is technical and requires understanding of how the
filesystem works (see appendix XXX ext2fspaper), but much of it is readily understandable even for
layadmins.
Figure 4­5. Sample output from dumpe2fs
dumpe2fs 0.5b, 11­Mar­95 for EXT2 FS 0.5a, 94/10/23
Filesystem magic number: 0xEF53
Filesystem state: clean
Errors behavior: Continue
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Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
Inode count: 360
Block count: 1440
Reserved block count: 72
Free blocks: 1133
Free inodes: 326
First block: 1
Block size: 1024
Fragment size: 1024
Blocks per group: 8192
Fragments per group: 8192
Inodes per group: 360
Last mount time: Tue Aug 8 01:52:52 1995
Last write time: Tue Aug 8 01:53:28 1995
Mount count: 3
Maximum mount count: 20
Last checked: Tue Aug 8 01:06:31 1995
Check interval: 0
Reserved blocks uid: 0 (user root)
Reserved blocks gid: 0 (group root)
Group 0:
Block bitmap at 3, Inode bitmap at 4, Inode table at 5
1133 free blocks, 326 free inodes, 2 directories
Free blocks: 307­1439
Free inodes: 35­360
debugfs is a filesystem debugger. It allows direct access to the filesystem data structures stored on disk
and can thus be used to repair a disk that is so broken that fsck can't fix it automatically. It has also been
known to be used to recover deleted files. However, debugfs very much requires that you understand
what you're doing; a failure to understand can destroy all your data.
dump and restore can be used to back up an ext2 filesystem. They are ext2 specific versions of the
traditional UNIX backup tools. See Chapter 10 for more information on backups.
Disks without filesystems
Not all disks or partitions are used as filesystems. A swap partition, for example, will not have a
filesystem on it. Many floppies are used in a tape­drive emulating fashion, so that a tar or other file is
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Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
written directly on the raw disk, without a filesystem. Linux boot floppies don't contain a filesystem,
only the raw kernel.
Avoiding a filesystem has the advantage of making more of the disk usable, since a filesystem always has
some bookkeeping overhead. It also makes the disks more easily compatible with other systems: for
example, the tar file format is the same on all systems, while filesystems are different on most systems.
You will quickly get used to disks without filesystems if you need them. Bootable Linux floppies also do
not necessarily have a filesystem, although that is also possible.
One reason to use raw disks is to make image copies of them. For instance, if the disk contains a partially
damaged filesystem, it is a good idea to make an exact copy of it before trying to fix it, since then you
can start again if your fixing breaks things even more. One way to do this is to use dd:
$ dd if=/dev/fd0H1440 of=floppy­image
2880+0 records in
2880+0 records out
$ dd if=floppy­image of=/dev/fd0H1440
2880+0 records in
2880+0 records out
$
The first dd makes an exact image of the floppy to the file floppy­image, the second one writes the
image to the floppy. (The user has presumably switched the floppy before the second command.
Otherwise the command pair is of doubtful usefulness.)
Allocating disk space
Partitioning schemes
It is not easy to partition a disk in the best possible way. Worse, there is no universally correct way to do
it; there are too many factors involved.
The traditional way is to have a (relatively) small root filesystem, which contains /bin, /etc, /dev,
/lib, /tmp, and other stuff that is needed to get the system up and running. This way, the root filesystem
(in its own partition or on its own disk) is all that is needed to bring up the system. The reasoning is that
if the root filesystem is small and is not heavily used, it is less likely to become corrupt when the system
crashes, and you will therefore find it easier to fix any problems caused by the crash. Then you create
separate partitions or use separate disks for the directory tree below /usr, the users' home directories
(often under /home), and the swap space. Separating the home directories (with the users' files) in their
own partition makes backups easier, since it is usually not necessary to backup programs (which reside
below /usr). In a networked environment it is also possible to share /usr among several machines (e.g.,
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Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
by using NFS), thereby reducing the total disk space required by several tens or hundreds of megabytes
times the number of machines.
The problem with having many partitions is that it splits the total amount of free disk space into many
small pieces. Nowadays, when disks and (hopefully) operating systems are more reliable, many people
prefer to have just one partition that holds all their files. On the other hand, it can be less painful to back
up (and restore) a small partition.
For a small hard disk (assuming you don't do kernel development), the best way to go is probably to
have just one partition. For large hard disks, it is probably better to have a few large partitions, just in
case something does go wrong. (Note that `small' and `large' are used in a relative sense here; your
needs for disk space decide what the threshold is.)
If you have several disks, you might wish to have the root filesystem (including /usr) on one, and the
users' home directories on another.
It is a good idea to be prepared to experiment a bit with different partitioning schemes (over time, not
just while first installing the system). This is a bit of work, since it essentially requires you to install the
system from scratch several times, but it is the only way to be sure you do it right.
Space requirements
The Linux distribution you install will give some indication of how much disk space you need for
various configurations. Programs installed separately may also do the same. This will help you plan your
disk space usage, but you should prepare for the future and reserve some extra space for things you will
notice later that you need.
The amount you need for user files depends on what your users wish to do. Most people seem to need as
much space for their files as possible, but the amount they will live happily with varies a lot. Some
people do only light text processing and will survive nicely with a few megabytes, others do heavy image
processing and will need gigabytes.
By the way, when comparing file sizes given in kilobytes or megabytes and disk space given in
megabytes, it can be important to know that the two units can be different. Some disk manufacturers like
to pretend that a kilobyte is 1000 bytes and a megabyte is 1000 kilobytes, while all the rest of the
computing world uses 1024 for both factors. Therefore, my 345 MB hard disk was really a 330 MB hard
disk. 10
Swap space allocation is discussed in the section called Allocating swap space in Chapter 5.
Examples of hard disk allocation
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Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
I used to have a 109 MB hard disk. Now I am using a 330 MB hard disk. I'll explain how and why I
partitioned these disks.
The 109 MB disk I partitioned in a lot of ways, when my needs and the operating systems I used
changed; I'll explain two typical scenarios. First, I used to run MS­DOS together with Linux. For that, I
needed about 20 MB of hard disk, or just enough to have MS­DOS, a C compiler, an editor, a few other
utilities, the program I was working on, and enough free disk space to not feel claustrophobic. For Linux,
I had a 10 MB swap partition, and the rest, or 79 MB, was a single partition with all the files I had under
Linux. I experimented with having separate root, /usr, and /home partitions, but there was never
enough free disk space in one piece to do much interesting.
When I didn't need MS­DOS anymore, I repartitioned the disk so that I had a 12 MB swap partition, and
again had the rest as a single filesystem.
The 330 MB disk is partitioned into several partitions, like this:
5 MB root filesystem
10 MB swap partition
180 MB /usr filesystem
120 MB /home filesystem
15 MB scratch partition
The scratch partition is for playing around with things that require their own partition, e.g., trying
different Linux distributions, or comparing speeds of filesystems. When not needed for anything else, it
is used as swap space (I like to have a lot of open windows).
Adding more disk space for Linux
Adding more disk space for Linux is easy, at least after the hardware has been properly installed (the
hardware installation is outside the scope of this book). You format it if necessary, then create the
partitions and filesystem as described above, and add the proper lines to /etc/fstab so that it is
mounted automatically.
Tips for saving disk space
The best tip for saving disk space is to avoid installing unnecessary programs. Most Linux distributions
have an option to install only part of the packages they contain, and by analyzing your needs you might
notice that you don't need most of them. This will help save a lot of disk space, since many programs are
quite large. Even if you do need a particular package or program, you might not need all of it. For
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Chapter 4. Using Disks and Other Storage Media
example, some on­line documentation might be unnecessary, as might some of the Elisp files for GNU
Emacs, some of the fonts for X11, or some of the libraries for programming.
If you cannot uninstall packages, you might look into compression. Compression programs such as gzip
or zip will compress (and uncompress) individual files or groups of files. The gzexe system will
compress and uncompress programs invisibly to the user (unused programs are compressed, then
uncompressed as they are used). The experimental DouBle system will compress all files in a filesystem,
invisibly to the programs that use them. (If you are familiar with products such as Stacker for MS­DOS,
the principle is the same.)
Notes
1. The platters are made of a hard substance, e.g., aluminium, which gives the hard disk its name.
2. The BIOS is some built­in software stored on ROM chips. It takes care, among other things, of the
initial stages of booting.
3. The numbers are completely imaginary.
4. That is, the surface inside the disk, on the metal disk inside the plastic coating.
5. But completely different, of course.
6. Illogical?
7. For more information, see the kernel source or the Kernel Hackers' Guide.
8. It should of course be unmount, but the n mysteriously disappeared in the 70's, and hasn't been seen
since. Please return it to Bell Labs, NJ, if you find it.
9. It requires several seconds of hard thinking on the users' behalf.
10. Sic transit discus mundi.
62

Chapter 5. Memory Management
``Minnet, jag har tappat mitt minne, r jag svensk eller finne, kommer inte ihg...'' (Bosse sterberg)
This section describes the Linux memory management features, i.e., virtual memory and the disk buffer
cache. The purpose and workings and the things the system administrator needs to take into
consideration are described.
What is virtual memory?
Linux supports virtual memory, that is, using a disk as an extension of RAM so that the effective size of
usable memory grows correspondingly. The kernel will write the contents of a currently unused block of
memory to the hard disk so that the memory can be used for another purpose. When the original contents
are needed again, they are read back into memory. This is all made completely transparent to the user;
programs running under Linux only see the larger amount of memory available and don't notice that
parts of them reside on the disk from time to time. Of course, reading and writing the hard disk is slower
(on the order of a thousand times slower) than using real memory, so the programs don't run as fast. The
part of the hard disk that is used as virtual memory is called the swap space.
Linux can use either a normal file in the filesystem or a separate partition for swap space. A swap
partition is faster, but it is easier to change the size of a swap file (there's no need to repartition the whole
hard disk, and possibly install everything from scratch). When you know how much swap space you
need, you should go for a swap partition, but if you are uncertain, you can use a swap file first, use the
system for a while so that you can get a feel for how much swap you need, and then make a swap
partition when you're confident about its size.
You should also know that Linux allows one to use several swap partitions and/or swap files at the same
time. This means that if you only occasionally need an unusual amount of swap space, you can set up an
extra swap file at such times, instead of keeping the whole amount allocated all the time.
A note on operating system terminology: computer science usually distinguishes between swapping
(writing the whole process out to swap space) and paging (writing only fixed size parts, usually a few
kilobytes, at a time). Paging is usually more efficient, and that's what Linux does, but traditional Linux
terminology talks about swapping anyway. 1
Creating a swap space
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Chapter 5. Memory Management
A swap file is an ordinary file; it is in no way special to the kernel. The only thing that matters to the
kernel is that it has no holes, and that it is prepared for use with mkswap. It must reside on a local disk,
however; it can't reside in a filesystem that has been mounted over NFS due to implementation reasons.
The bit about holes is important. The swap file reserves the disk space so that the kernel can quickly
swap out a page without having to go through all the things that are necessary when allocating a disk
sector to a file. The kernel merely uses any sectors that have already been allocated to the file. Because a
hole in a file means that there are no disk sectors allocated (for that place in the file), it is not good for the
kernel to try to use them.
One good way to create the swap file without holes is through the following command:
$ dd if=/dev/zero of=/extra­swap bs=1024 count=1024
1024+0 records in
1024+0 records out
$
where /extra­swap is the name of the swap file and the size of is given after the count=. It is best for
the size to be a multiple of 4, because the kernel writes out memory pages, which are 4 kilobytes in size.
If the size is not a multiple of 4, the last couple of kilobytes may be unused.
A swap partition is also not special in any way. You create it just like any other partition; the only
difference is that it is used as a raw partition, that is, it will not contain any filesystem at all. It is a good
idea to mark swap partitions as type 82 (Linux swap); this will the make partition listings clearer, even
though it is not strictly necessary to the kernel.
After you have created a swap file or a swap partition, you need to write a signature to its beginning; this
contains some administrative information and is used by the kernel. The command to do this is mkswap,
used like this:
$ mkswap /extra­swap 1024
Setting up swapspace, size = 1044480 bytes
$
Note that the swap space is still not in use yet: it exists, but the kernel does not use it to provide virtual
memory.
You should be very careful when using mkswap, since it does not check that the file or partition isn't
used for anything else. You can easily overwrite important files and partitions with mkswap! Fortunately,
you should only need to use mkswap when you install your system.
The Linux memory manager limits the size of each swap space to about 127 MB (for various technical
reasons, the actual limit is (4096­10) * 8 * 4096 = 133890048$ bytes, or 127.6875 megabytes). You can,
however, use up to 8 swap spaces simultaneously, for a total of almost 1 GB. 2
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Chapter 5. Memory Management
Using a swap space
An initialized swap space is taken into use with swapon. This command tells the kernel that the swap
space can be used. The path to the swap space is given as the argument, so to start swapping on a
temporary swap file one might use the following command.
$ swapon /extra­swap
$
Swap spaces can be used automatically by listing them in the /etc/fstab file.
/dev/hda8 none swap sw 0 0
/swapfile none swap sw 0 0
The startup scripts will run the command swapon ­a, which will start swapping on all the swap spaces
listed in /etc/fstab. Therefore, the swapon command is usually used only when extra swap is needed.
You can monitor the use of swap spaces with free. It will tell the total amount of swap space used.
$ free
total used free shared buffers
Mem: 15152 14896 256 12404 2528
­/+ buffers: 12368 2784
Swap: 32452 6684 25768
$
The first line of output (Mem:) shows the physical memory. The total column does not show the physical
memory used by the kernel, which is usually about a megabyte. The used column shows the amount of
memory used (the second line does not count buffers). The free column shows completely unused
memory. The shared column shows the amount of memory shared by several processes; the more, the
merrier. The buffers column shows the current size of the disk buffer cache.
That last line (Swap:) shows similar information for the swap spaces. If this line is all zeroes, your swap
space is not activated.
The same information is available via top, or using the proc filesystem in file /proc/meminfo. It is
currently difficult to get information on the use of a specific swap space.
A swap space can be removed from use with swapoff. It is usually not necessary to do it, except for
temporary swap spaces. Any pages in use in the swap space are swapped in first; if there is not sufficient
physical memory to hold them, they will then be swapped out (to some other swap space). If there is not
enough virtual memory to hold all of the pages Linux will start to thrash; after a long while it should
recover, but meanwhile the system is unusable. You should check (e.g., with free) that there is enough
free memory before removing a swap space from use.
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Chapter 5. Memory Management
All the swap spaces that are used automatically with swapon ­a can be removed from use with swapoff
­a; it looks at the file /etc/fstab to find what to remove. Any manually used swap spaces will remain
in use.
Sometimes a lot of swap space can be in use even though there is a lot of free physical memory. This can
happen for instance if at one point there is need to swap, but later a big process that occupied much of the
physical memory terminates and frees the memory. The swapped­out data is not automatically swapped
in until it is needed, so the physical memory may remain free for a long time. There is no need to worry
about this, but it can be comforting to know what is happening.
Sharing swap spaces with other operating systems
Virtual memory is built into many operating systems. Since they each need it only when they are
running, i.e., never at the same time, the swap spaces of all but the currently running one are being
wasted. It would be more efficient for them to share a single swap space. This is possible, but can require
a bit of hacking. The Tips­HOWTO contains some advice on how to implement this.
Allocating swap space
Some people will tell you that you should allocate twice as much swap space as you have physical
memory, but this is a bogus rule. Here's how to do it properly:
. Estimate your total memory needs. This is the largest amount of memory you'll probably need at a
time, that is the sum of the memory requirements of all the programs you want to run at the same time.
This can be done by running at the same time all the programs you are likely to ever be running at the
same time.
For instance, if you want to run X, you should allocate about 8 MB for it, gcc wants several megabytes
(some files need an unusually large amount, up to tens of megabytes, but usually about four should
do), and so on. The kernel will use about a megabyte by itself, and the usual shells and other small
utilities perhaps a few hundred kilobytes (say a megabyte together). There is no need to try to be exact,
rough estimates are fine, but you might want to be on the pessimistic side.
Remember that if there are going to be several people using the system at the same time, they are all
going to consume memory. However, if two people run the same program at the same time, the total
memory consumption is usually not double, since code pages and shared libraries exist only once.
The free and ps commands are useful for estimating the memory needs.
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Chapter 5. Memory Management
. Add some security to the estimate in step 1. This is because estimates of program sizes will probably
be wrong, because you'll probably forget some programs you want to run, and to make certain that
you have some extra space just in case. A couple of megabytes should be fine. (It is better to allocate
too much than too little swap space, but there's no need to over­do it and allocate the whole disk, since
unused swap space is wasted space; see later about adding more swap.) Also, since it is nicer to deal
with even numbers, you can round the value up to the next full megabyte.
. Based on the computations above, you know how much memory you'll be needing in total. So, in
order to allocate swap space, you just need to subtract the size of your physical memory from the total
memory needed, and you know how much swap space you need. (On some versions of UNIX, you
need to allocate space for an image of the physical memory as well, so the amount computed in step 2
is what you need and you shouldn't do the subtraction.)
. If your calculated swap space is very much larger than your physical memory (more than a couple
times larger), you should probably invest in more physical memory, otherwise performance will be too
low.
It's a good idea to have at least some swap space, even if your calculations indicate that you need none.
Linux uses swap space somewhat aggressively, so that as much physical memory as possible can be kept
free. Linux will swap out memory pages that have not been used, even if the memory is not yet needed
for anything. This avoids waiting for swapping when it is needed: the swapping can be done earlier,
when the disk is otherwise idle.
Swap space can be divided among several disks. This can sometimes improve performance, depending
on the relative speeds of the disks and the access patterns of the disks. You might want to experiment
with a few schemes, but be aware that doing the experiments properly is quite difficult. You should not
believe claims that any one scheme is superior to any other, since it won't always be true.
The buffer cache
Reading from a disk 3 is very slow compared to accessing (real) memory. In addition, it is common to
read the same part of a disk several times during relatively short periods of time. For example, one might
first read an e­mail message, then read the letter into an editor when replying to it, then make the mail
program read it again when copying it to a folder. Or, consider how often the command ls might be run
on a system with many users. By reading the information from disk only once and then keeping it in
memory until no longer needed, one can speed up all but the first read. This is called disk buffering, and
the memory used for the purpose is called the buffer cache.
Since memory is, unfortunately, a finite, nay, scarce resource, the buffer cache usually cannot be big
enough (it can't hold all the data one ever wants to use). When the cache fills up, the data that has been
unused for the longest time is discarded and the memory thus freed is used for the new data.
67

Chapter 5. Memory Management
Disk buffering works for writes as well. On the one hand, data that is written is often soon read again
(e.g., a source code file is saved to a file, then read by the compiler), so putting data that is written in the
cache is a good idea. On the other hand, by only putting the data into the cache, not writing it to disk at
once, the program that writes runs quicker. The writes can then be done in the background, without
slowing down the other programs.
Most operating systems have buffer caches (although they might be called something else), but not all of
them work according to the above principles. Some are write­through: the data is written to disk at once
(it is kept in the cache as well, of course). The cache is called write­back if the writes are done at a later
time. Write­back is more efficient than write­through, but also a bit more prone to errors: if the machine
crashes, or the power is cut at a bad moment, or the floppy is removed from the disk drive before the data
in the cache waiting to be written gets written, the changes in the cache are usually lost. This might even
mean that the filesystem (if there is one) is not in full working order, perhaps because the unwritten data
held important changes to the bookkeeping information.
Because of this, you should never turn off the power without using a proper shutdown procedure (see
Chapter 6), or remove a floppy from the disk drive until it has been unmounted (if it was mounted) or
after whatever program is using it has signaled that it is finished and the floppy drive light doesn't shine
anymore. The sync command flushes the buffer, i.e., forces all unwritten data to be written to disk, and
can be used when one wants to be sure that everything is safely written. In traditional UNIX systems,
there is a program called update running in the background which does a sync every 30 seconds, so it is
usually not necessary to use sync. Linux has an additional daemon, bdflush, which does a more
imperfect sync more frequently to avoid the sudden freeze due to heavy disk I/O that sync sometimes
causes.
Under Linux, bdflush is started by update. There is usually no reason to worry about it, but if bdflush
happens to die for some reason, the kernel will warn about this, and you should start it by hand
(/sbin/update).
The cache does not actually buffer files, but blocks, which are the smallest units of disk I/O (under
Linux, they are usually 1 kB). This way, also directories, super blocks, other filesystem bookkeeping
data, and non­filesystem disks are cached.
The effectiveness of a cache is primarily decided by its size. A small cache is next to useless: it will hold
so little data that all cached data is flushed from the cache before it is reused. The critical size depends on
how much data is read and written, and how often the same data is accessed. The only way to know is to
experiment.
If the cache is of a fixed size, it is not very good to have it too big, either, because that might make the
free memory too small and cause swapping (which is also slow). To make the most efficient use of real
memory, Linux automatically uses all free RAM for buffer cache, but also automatically makes the cache
smaller when programs need more memory.
Under Linux, you do not need to do anything to make use of the cache, it happens completely
automatically. Except for following the proper procedures for shutdown and removing floppies, you do
68

Chapter 5. Memory Management
not need to worry about it.
Notes
1. Thus quite needlessly annoying a number of computer scientists something horrible.
2. A gigabyte here, a gigabyte there, pretty soon we start talking about real memory.
3. Except a RAM disk, for obvious reasons.
69

Chapter 6. Boots And Shutdowns
Start me up
Ah... you've got to... you've got to
Never, never never stop
Start it up
Ah... start it up, never, never, never
You make a grown man cry,
you make a grown man cry
(Rolling Stones)
This section explains what goes on when a Linux system is brought up and taken down, and how it
should be done properly. If proper procedures are not followed, files might be corrupted or lost.
An overview of boots and shutdowns
The act of turning on a computer system and causing its operating system to be loaded 1 is called
booting. The name comes from an image of the computer pulling itself up from its bootstraps, but the act
itself slightly more realistic.
During bootstrapping, the computer first loads a small piece of code called the bootstrap loader, which
in turn loads and starts the operating system. The bootstrap loader is usually stored in a fixed location on
a hard disk or a floppy. The reason for this two step process is that the operating system is big and
complicated, but the first piece of code that the computer loads must be very small (a few hundred bytes),
to avoid making the firmware unnecessarily complicated.
Different computers do the bootstrapping differently. For PC's, the computer (its BIOS) reads in the first
sector (called the boot sector) of a floppy or hard disk. The bootstrap loader is contained within this
sector. It loads the operating system from elsewhere on the disk (or from some other place).
After Linux has been loaded, it initializes the hardware and device drivers, and then runs init. init starts
other processes to allow users to log in, and do things. The details of this part will be discussed below.
In order to shut down a Linux system, first all processes are told to terminate (this makes them close any
files and do other necessary things to keep things tidy), then filesystems and swap areas are unmounted,
and finally a message is printed to the console that the power can be turned off. If the proper procedure is
not followed, terrible things can and will happen; most importantly, the filesystem buffer cache might not
be flushed, which means that all data in it is lost and the filesystem on disk is inconsistent, and therefore
possibly unusable.
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Chapter 6. Boots And Shutdowns
The boot process in closer look
You can boot Linux either from a floppy or from the hard disk. The installation section in the Installation
and Getting Started guide (XXX citation) tells you how to install Linux so you can boot it the way you
want to.
When a PC is booted, the BIOS will do various tests to check that everything looks all right, 2 and will
then start the actual booting. It will choose a disk drive (typically the first floppy drive, if there is a floppy
inserted, otherwise the first hard disk, if one is installed in the computer; the order might be configurable,
however) and will then read its very first sector. This is called the boot sector; for a hard disk, it is also
called the master boot record, since a hard disk can contain several partitions, each with their own boot
sectors.
The boot sector contains a small program (small enough to fit into one sector) whose responsibility is to
read the actual operating system from the disk and start it. When booting Linux from a floppy disk, the
boot sector contains code that just reads the first few hundred blocks (depending on the actual kernel
size, of course) to a predetermined place in memory. On a Linux boot floppy, there is no filesystem, the
kernel is just stored in consecutive sectors, since this simplifies the boot process. It is possible, however,
to boot from a floppy with a filesystem, by using LILO, the LInux LOader.
When booting from the hard disk, the code in the master boot record will examine the partition table
(also in the master boot record), identify the active partition (the partition that is marked to be bootable),
read the boot sector from that partition, and then start the code in that boot sector. The code in the
partition's boot sector does what a floppy disk's boot sector does: it will read in the kernel from the
partition and start it. The details vary, however, since it is generally not useful to have a separate partition
for just the kernel image, so the code in the partition's boot sector can't just read the disk in sequential
order, it has to find the sectors wherever the filesystem has put them. There are several ways around this
problem, but the most common way is to use LILO. (The details about how to do this are irrelevant for
this discussion, however; see the LILO documentation for more information; it is most thorough.)
When booting with LILO, it will normally go right ahead and read in and boot the default kernel. It is
also possible to configure LILO to be able to boot one of several kernels, or even other operating systems
than Linux, and it is possible for the user to choose which kernel or operating system is to be booted at
boot time. LILO can be configured so that if one holds down the alt, shift, or ctrl key at boot time (when
LILO is loaded), LILO will ask what is to be booted and not boot the default right away. Alternatively,
LILO can be configured so that it will always ask, with an optional timeout that will cause the default
kernel to be booted.
With LILO, it is also possible to give a kernel command line argument, after the name of the kernel or
operating system.
Booting from floppy and from hard disk have both their advantages, but generally booting from the hard
disk is nicer, since it avoids the hassle of playing around with floppies. It is also faster. However, it can be
more troublesome to install the system to boot from the hard disk, so many people will first boot from
71

Chapter 6. Boots And Shutdowns
floppy, then, when the system is otherwise installed and working well, will install LILO and start booting
from the hard disk.
After the Linux kernel has been read into the memory, by whatever means, and is started for real, roughly
the following things happen:
. The Linux kernel is installed compressed, so it will first uncompress itself. The beginning of the
kernel image contains a small program that does this.
. If you have a super­VGA card that Linux recognizes and that has some special text modes (such as
100 columns by 40 rows), Linux asks you which mode you want to use. During the kernel
compilation, it is possible to preset a video mode, so that this is never asked. This can also be done
with LILO or rdev.
. After this, the kernel checks what other hardware there is (hard disks, floppies, network adapters, etc),
and configures some of its device drivers appropriately; while it does this, it outputs messages about
its findings. For example, when I boot, I it looks like this:
LILO boot:
Loading linux.
Console: colour EGA+ 80x25, 8 virtual consoles
Serial driver version 3.94 with no serial options enabled
tty00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16450
tty01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16450
lp_init: lp1 exists (0), using polling driver
Memory: 7332k/8192k available (300k kernel code, 384k reserved, 176k data)
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M, fd1 is 1.2M
Loopback device init
Warning WD8013 board not found at i/o = 280.
Math coprocessor using irq13 error reporting.
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 hda3
VFS: Mounted root (ext filesystem).
Linux version 0.99.pl9­1 (root@haven) 05/01/93 14:12:20
The exact texts are different on different systems, depending on the hardware, the version of Linux being
used, and how it has been configured.
. Then the kernel will try to mount the root filesystem. The place is configurable at compilation time, or
any time with rdev or LILO. The filesystem type is detected automatically. If the mounting of the root
filesystem fails, for example because you didn't remember to include the corresponding filesystem
driver in the kernel, the kernel panics and halts the system (there isn't much it can do, anyway).
The root filesystem is usually mounted read­only (this can be set in the same way as the place). This
makes it possible to check the filesystem while it is mounted; it is not a good idea to check a
filesystem that is mounted read­write.
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Chapter 6. Boots And Shutdowns
. After this, the kernel starts the program init (located in /sbin/init) in the background (this will
always become process number 1). init does various startup chores. The exact things it does depends
on how it is configured; see Chapter 7 for more information (not yet written). It will at least start some
essential background daemons.
. init then switches to multi­user mode, and starts a getty for virtual consoles and serial lines. getty is
the program which lets people log in via virtual consoles and serial terminals. init may also start some
other programs, depending on how it is configured.
. After this, the boot is complete, and the system is up and running normally.
More about shutdowns
It is important to follow the correct procedures when you shut down a Linux system. If you fail do so,
your filesystems probably will become trashed and the files probably will become scrambled. This is
because Linux has a disk cache that won't write things to disk at once, but only at intervals. This greatly
improves performance but also means that if you just turn off the power at a whim the cache may hold a
lot of data and that what is on the disk may not be a fully working filesystem (because only some things
have been written to the disk).
Another reason against just flipping the power switch is that in a multi­tasking system there can be lots
of things going on in the background, and shutting the power can be quite disastrous. By using the proper
shutdown sequence, you ensure that all background processes can save their data.
The command for properly shutting down a Linux system is shutdown. It is usually used in one of two
ways.
If you are running a system where you are the only user, the usual way of using shutdown is to quit all
running programs, log out on all virtual consoles, log in as root on one of them (or stay logged in as root
if you already are, but you should change to root's home directory or the root directory, to avoid
problems with unmounting), then give the command shutdown ­h now (substitute now with a plus sign
and a number in minutes if you want a delay, though you usually don't on a single user system).
Alternatively, if your system has many users, use the command shutdown ­h +time message, where
time is the time in minutes until the system is halted, and message is a short explanation of why the
system is shutting down.
# shutdown ­h +10 'We will install a new disk. System should
> be back on­line in three hours.'
#
This will warn everybody that the system will shut down in ten minutes, and that they'd better get lost or
lose data. The warning is printed to every terminal on which someone is logged in, including all xterms:
73

Chapter 6. Boots And Shutdowns
Broadcast message from root (ttyp0) Wed Aug 2 01:03:25 1995...
We will install a new disk. System should
be back on­line in three hours.
The system is going DOWN for system halt in 10 minutes !!
The warning is automatically repeated a few times before the boot, with shorter and shorter intervals as
the time runs out.
When the real shutting down starts after any delays, all filesystems (except the root one) are unmounted,
user processes (if anybody is still logged in) are killed, daemons are shut down, all filesystem are
unmounted, and generally everything settles down. When that is done, init prints out a message that you
can power down the machine. Then, and only then, should you move your fingers towards the power
switch.
Sometimes, although rarely on any good system, it is impossible to shut down properly. For instance, if
the kernel panics and crashes and burns and generally misbehaves, it might be completely impossible to
give any new commands, hence shutting down properly is somewhat difficult, and just about everything
you can do is hope that nothing has been too severely damaged and turn off the power. If the troubles are
a bit less severe (say, somebody hit your keyboard with an axe), and the kernel and the update program
still run normally, it is probably a good idea to wait a couple of minutes to give update a chance to flush
the buffer cache, and only cut the power after that.
Some people like to shut down using the command sync 3 three times, waiting for the disk I/O to stop,
then turn off the power. If there are no running programs, this is about equivalent to using shutdown.
However, it does not unmount any filesystems and this can lead to problems with the ext2fs ``clean
filesystem'' flag. The triple­sync method is not recommended.
(In case you're wondering: the reason for three syncs is that in the early days of UNIX, when the
commands were typed separately, that usually gave sufficient time for most disk I/O to be finished.)
Rebooting
Rebooting means booting the system again. This can be accomplished by first shutting it down
completely, turning power off, and then turning it back on. A simpler way is to ask shutdown to reboot
the system, instead of merely halting it. This is accomplished by using the ­r option to shutdown, for
example, by giving the command shutdown ­r now.
Most Linux systems run shutdown ­r now when ctrl­alt­del is pressed on the keyboard. This reboots the
system. The action on ctrl­alt­del is configurable, however, and it might be better to allow for some delay
before the reboot on a multiuser machine. Systems that are physically accessible to anyone might even
be configured to do nothing when ctrl­alt­del is pressed.
74

Chapter 6. Boots And Shutdowns
Single user mode
The shutdown command can also be used to bring the system down to single user mode, in which no
one can log in, but root can use the console. This is useful for system administration tasks that can't be
done while the system is running normally.
Emergency boot floppies
It is not always possible to boot a computer from the hard disk. For example, if you make a mistake in
configuring LILO, you might make your system unbootable. For these situations, you need an alternative
way of booting that will always work (as long as the hardware works). For typical PC's, this means
booting from the floppy drive.
Most Linux distributions allow one to create an emergency boot floppy during installation. It is a good
idea to do this. However, some such boot disks contain only the kernel, and assume you will be using the
programs on the distribution's installation disks to fix whatever problem you have. Sometimes those
programs aren't enough; for example, you might have to restore some files from backups made with
software not on the installation disks.
Thus, it might be necessary to create a custom root floppy as well. The Bootdisk HOWTO by Graham
Chapman (XXX citation) contains instructions for doing this. You must, of course, remember to keep
your emergency boot and root floppies up to date.
You can't use the floppy drive you use to mount the root floppy for anything else. This can be
inconvenient if you only have one floppy drive. However, if you have enough memory, you can configure
your boot floppy to load the root disk to a ramdisk (the boot floppy's kernel needs to be specially
configured for this). Once the root floppy has been loaded into the ramdisk, the floppy drive is free to
mount other disks.
Notes
1. On early computers, it wasn't enough to merely turn on the computer, you had to manually load the
operating system as well. These new­fangled thing­a­ma­jigs do it all by themselves.
2. This is called the power on self test, or POST for short.
3. sync flushes the buffer cache.
75

Chapter 7. init
``Uuno on numero yksi'' (Slogan for a series of Finnish movies.)
This chapter describes the init process, which is the first user level process started by the kernel. init has
many important duties, such as starting getty (so that users can log in), implementing run levels, and
taking care of orphaned processes. This chapter explains how init is configured and how you can make
use of the different run levels.
init comes first
init is one of those programs that are absolutely essential to the operation of a Linux system, but that you
still can mostly ignore. A good Linux distribution will come with a configuration for init that will work
for most systems, and on these systems there is nothing you need to do about init. Usually, you only
need to worry about init if you hook up serial terminals, dial­in (not dial­out) modems, or if you want to
change the default run level.
When the kernel has started itself (has been loaded into memory, has started running, and has initialized
all device drivers and data structures and such), it finishes its own part of the boot process by starting a
user level program, init. Thus, init is always the first process (its process number is always 1).
The kernel looks for init in a few locations that have been historically used for it, but the proper location
for it (on a Linux system) is /sbin/init. If the kernel can't find init, it tries to run /bin/sh, and if that
also fails, the startup of the system fails.
When init starts, it finishes the boot process by doing a number of administrative tasks, such as checking
filesystems, cleaning up /tmp, starting various services, and starting a getty for each terminal and virtual
console where users should be able to log in (see Chapter 8).
After the system is properly up, init restarts getty for each terminal after a user has logged out (so that
the next user can log in). init also adopts orphan processes: when a process starts a child process and dies
before its child, the child immediately becomes a child of init. This is important for various technical
reasons, but it is good to know it, since it makes it easier to understand process lists and process tree
graphs. 1 There are a few variants of init available. Most Linux distributions use sysvinit (written by
Miquel van Smoorenburg), which is based on the System V init design. The BSD versions of Unix have
a different init. The primary difference is run levels: System V has them, BSD does not (at least
traditionally). This difference is not essential. We'll look at sysvinit only.
76

Chapter 7. init
Configuring init to start getty: the /etc/inittab file
When it starts up, init reads the /etc/inittab configuration file. While the system is running, it will
re­read it, if sent the HUP signal; 2 this feature makes it unnecessary to boot the system to make changes
to the init configuration take effect.
The /etc/inittab file is a bit complicated. We'll start with the simple case of configuring getty lines.
Lines in /etc/inittab consist of four colon­delimited fields:
id:runlevels:action:process
The fields are described below. In addition, /etc/inittab can contain empty lines, and lines that begin
with a number sign (`#'); these are both ignored.
id
This identifies the line in the file. For getty lines, it specifies the terminal it runs on (the characters
after /dev/tty in the device file name). For other lines, it doesn't matter (except for length
restrictions), but it should be unique.
runlevels
The run levels the line should be considered for. The run levels are given as single digits, without
delimiters. (Run levels are described in the next section.)
action
What action should be taken by the line, e.g., respawn to run the command in the next field again,
when it exits, or once to run it just once.
process
The command to run.
To start a getty on the first virtual terminal (/dev/tty1), in all the normal multi­user run levels (2­5),
one would write the following line:
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 9600 tty1
77

Chapter 7. init
The first field says that this is the line for /dev/tty1. The second field says that it applies to run levels
2, 3, 4, and 5. The third field means that the command should be run again, after it exits (so that one can
log in, log out, and then log in again). The last field is the command that runs getty on the first virtual
terminal. 3
If you wanted to add terminals or dial­in modem lines to a system, you'd add more lines to
/etc/inittab, one for each terminal or dial­in line. For more details, see the manual pages init,
inittab, and getty.
If a command fails when it starts, and init is configured to restart it, it will use a lot of system
resources: init starts it, it fails, init starts it, it fails, init starts it, it fails, and so on, ad infinitum. To
prevent this, init will keep track of how often it restarts a command, and if the frequency grows to high,
it will delay for five minutes before restarting again.
Run levels
A run level is a state of init and the whole system that defines what system services are operating. Run
levels are identified by numbers, see Table 7­1. There is no consensus of how to use the user defined run
levels (2 through 5). Some system administrators use run levels to define which subsystems are working,
e.g., whether X is running, whether the network is operational, and so on. Others have all subsystems
always running or start and stop them individually, without changing run levels, since run levels are too
coarse for controlling their systems. You need to decide for yourself, but it might be easiest to follow the
way your Linux distribution does things.
Table 7­1. Run level numbers
0 Halt the system.
1 Single­user mode (for special administration).
2­5 Normal operation (user defined).
6 Reboot.
Run levels are configured in /etc/inittab by lines like the following:
l2:2:wait:/etc/init.d/rc 2
The first field is an arbitrary label, the second one means that this applies for run level 2. The third field
means that init should run the command in the fourth field once, when the run level is entered, and that
init should wait for it to complete. The /etc/init.d/rc command runs whatever commands are
necessary to start and stop services to enter run level 2.
78

Chapter 7. init
The command in the fourth field does all the hard work of setting up a run level. It starts services that
aren't already running, and stops services that shouldn't be running in the new run level any more.
Exactly what the command is, and how run levels are configured, depends on the Linux distribution.
When init starts, it looks for a line in /etc/inittab that specifies the default run level:
id:2:initdefault:
You can ask init to go to a non­default run level at startup by giving the kernel a command line argument
of single or emergency. Kernel command line arguments can be given via LILO, for example. This
allows you to choose the single user mode (run level 1).
While the system is running, the telinit command can change the run level. When the run level is
changed, init runs the relevant command from /etc/inittab.
Special configuration in /etc/inittab
The /etc/inittab has some special features that allow init to react to special circumstances. These
special features are marked by special keywords in the third field. Some examples:
powerwait
Allows init to shut the system down, when the power fails. This assumes the use of a UPS, and
software that watches the UPS and informs init that the power is off.
ctrlaltdel
Allows init to reboot the system, when the user presses ctrl­alt­del on the console keyboard. Note
that the system administrator can configure the reaction to ctrl­alt­del to be something else instead,
e.g., to be ignored, if the system is in a public location. (Or to start nethack.)
sysinit
Command to be run when the system is booted. This command usually cleans up /tmp, for example.
The list above is not exhaustive. See your inittab manual page for all possibilities, and for details on
how to use the above ones.
79

Chapter 7. init
Booting in single user mode
An important run level is single user mode (run level 1), in which only the system administrator is using
the machine and as few system services, including logins, as possible are running. Single user mode is
necessary for a few administrative tasks, 4 such as running fsck on a /usr partition, since this requires
that the partition be unmounted, and that can't happen, unless just about all system services are killed.
A running system can be taken to single user mode by using telinit to request run level 1. At bootup, it
can be entered by giving the word single or emergency on the kernel command line: the kernel gives
the command line to init as well, and init understands from that word that it shouldn't use the default run
level. (The kernel command line is entered in a way that depends on how you boot the system.)
Booting into single user mode is sometimes necessary so that one can run fsck by hand, before anything
mounts or otherwise touches a broken /usr partition (any activity on a broken filesystem is likely to
break it more, so fsck should be run as soon as possible).
The bootup scripts init runs will automatically enter single user mode, if the automatic fsck at bootup
fails. This is an attempt to prevent the system from using a filesystem that is so broken that fsck can't fix
it automatically. Such breakage is relatively rare, and usually involves a broken hard disk or an
experimental kernel release, but it's good to be prepared.
As a security measure, a properly configured system will ask for the root password before starting the
shell in single user mode. Otherwise, it would be simple to just enter a suitable line to LILO to get in as
root. (This will break if /etc/passwd has been broken by filesystem problems, of course, and in that
case you'd better have a boot floppy handy.)
Notes
1. init itself is not allowed to die. You can't kill init even with SIGKILL.
2. Using the command kill ­HUP 1 as root, for example
3. Different versions of getty are run differently. Consult your manual page, and make sure it is the
correct manual page.
4. It probably shouldn't be used for playing nethack.
80

Chapter 8. Logging In And Out
``I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as a member.'' (Groucho Marx)
This section describes what happens when a user logs in or out. The various interactions of background
processes, log files, configuration files, and so on are described in some detail.
Logins via terminals
Figure 8­1 shows how logins happen via terminals. First, init makes sure there is a getty program for the
terminal connection (or console). getty listens at the terminal and waits for the user to notify that he is
ready to login in (this usually means that the user must type something). When it notices a user, getty
outputs a welcome message (stored in /etc/issue), and prompts for the username, and finally runs the
login program. login gets the username as a parameter, and prompts the user for the password. If these
match, login starts the shell configured for the user; else it just exits and terminates the process (perhaps
after giving the user another chance at entering the username and password). init notices that the process
terminated, and starts a new getty for the terminal.
81

Chapter 8. Logging In And Out
Figure 8­1. Logins via terminals: the interaction of init, getty, login, and the shell.
init: fork +
exec("/sbin/getty")
getty: wait for user
do they match?
login: exec("/bin/sh")
sh: read and execute
commands
sh: exit
login: exit
login: read password
exec("/bin/login")
getty: read username,
no
yes
START
82

Chapter 8. Logging In And Out
Note that the only new process is the one created by init (using the fork system call); getty and login
only replace the program running in the process (using the exec system call).
A separate program, for noticing the user, is needed for serial lines, since it can be (and traditionally was)
complicated to notice when a terminal becomes active. getty also adapts to the speed and other settings
of the connection, which is important especially for dial­in connections, where these parameters may
change from call to call.
There are several versions of getty and init in use, all with their good and bad points. It is a good idea to
learn about the versions on your system, and also about the other versions (you could use the Linux
Software Map to search them). If you don't have dial­in's, you probably don't have to worry about getty,
but init is still important.
Logins via the network
Two computers in the same network are usually linked via a single physical cable. When they
communicate over the network, the programs in each computer that take part in the communication are
linked via a virtual connection, a sort of imaginary cable. As far as the programs at either end of the
virtual connection are concerned, they have a monopoly on their own cable. However, since the cable is
not real, only imaginary, the operating systems of both computers can have several virtual connections
share the same physical cable. This way, using just a single cable, several programs can communicate
without having to know of or care about the other communications. It is even possible to have several
computers use the same cable; the virtual connections exist between two computers, and the other
computers ignore those connections that they don't take part in.
That's a complicated and over­abstracted description of the reality. It might, however, be good enough to
understand the important reason why network logins are somewhat different from normal logins. The
virtual connections are established when there are two programs on different computers that wish to
communicate. Since it is in principle possible to login from any computer in a network to any other
computer, there is a huge number of potential virtual communications. Because of this, it is not practical
to start a getty for each potential login.
There is a single process inetd (corresponding to getty) that handles all network logins. When it notices
an incoming network login (i.e., it notices that it gets a new virtual connection to some other computer),
it starts a new process to handle that single login. The original process remains and continues to listen for
new logins.
To make things a bit more complicated, there is more than one communication protocol for network
logins. The two most important ones are telnet and rlogin. In addition to logins, there are many other
virtual connections that may be made (for FTP, Gopher, HTTP, and other network services). It would be
ineffective to have a separate process listening for a particular type of connection, so instead there is only
one listener that can recognize the type of the connection and can start the correct type of program to
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Chapter 8. Logging In And Out
provide the service. This single listener is called inetd; see the Linux Network Administrators' Guide for
more information.
What login does
The login program takes care of authenticating the user (making sure that the username and password
match), and of setting up an initial environment for the user by setting permissions for the serial line and
starting the shell.
Part of the initial setup is outputting the contents of the file /etc/motd (short for message of the day)
and checking for electronic mail. These can be disabled by creating a file called .hushlogin in the
user's home directory.
If the file /etc/nologin exists, logins are disabled. That file is typically created by shutdown and
relatives. login checks for this file, and will refuse to accept a login if it exists. If it does exist, login
outputs its contents to the terminal before it quits.
login logs all failed login attempts in a system log file (via syslog). It also logs all logins by root. Both of
these can be useful when tracking down intruders.
Currently logged in people are listed in /var/run/utmp. This file is valid only until the system is next
rebooted or shut down; it is cleared when the system is booted. It lists each user and the terminal (or
network connection) he is using, along with some other useful information. The who, w, and other
similar commands look in utmp to see who are logged in.
All successful logins are recorded into /var/log/wtmp. This file will grow without limit, so it must be
cleaned regularly, for example by having a weekly cron job to clear it. 1 The last command browses
wtmp.
Both utmp and wtmp are in a binary format (see the utmp manual page); it is unfortunately not
convenient to examine them without special programs.
X and xdm
XXX X implements logins via xdm; also: xterm ­ls
Access control
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Chapter 8. Logging In And Out
The user database is traditionally contained in the /etc/passwd file. Some systems use shadow
passwords, and have moved the passwords to /etc/shadow. Sites with many computers that share the
accounts use NIS or some other method to store the user database; they might also automatically copy
the database from one central location to all other computers.
The user database contains not only the passwords, but also some additional information about the users,
such as their real names, home directories, and login shells. This other information needs to be public, so
that anyone can read it. Therefore the password is stored encrypted. This does have the drawback that
anyone with access to the encrypted password can use various cryptographical methods to guess it,
without trying to actually log into the computer. Shadow passwords try to avoid this by moving the
password into another file, which only root can read (the password is still stored encrypted). However,
installing shadow passwords later onto a system that did not support them can be difficult.
With or without passwords, it is important to make sure that all passwords in a system are good, i.e., not
easily guessable. The crack program can be used to crack passwords; any password it can find is by
definition not a good one. While crack can be run by intruders, it can also be run by the system
adminstrator to avoid bad passwords. Good passwords can also be enforced by the passwd program; this
is in fact more effective in CPU cycles, since cracking passwords requires quite a lot of computation.
The user group database is kept in /etc/group; for systems with shadow passwords, there can be a
/etc/shadow.group.
root usually can't login via most terminals or the network, only via terminals listed in the
/etc/securetty file. This makes it necessary to get physical access to one of these terminals. It is,
however, possible to log in via any terminal as any other user, and use the su command to become root.
Shell startup
When an interactive login shell starts, it automatically executes one or more pre­defined files. Different
shells execute different files; see the documentation of each shell for further information.
Most shells first run some global file, for example, the Bourne shell (/bin/sh) and its derivatives execute
/etc/profile; in addition, they execute .profile in the user's home directory. /etc/profile
allows the system administrator to have set up a common user environment, especially by setting the
PATH to include local command directories in addition to the normal ones. On the other hand,
.profile allows the user to customize the environment to his own tastes by overriding, if necessary, the
default environment.
Notes
1. Good Linux distributions do this out of the box.
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Chapter 9. Managing user accounts
``The similarities of sysadmins and drug dealers: both measure stuff in K's, and both have users.'' (Old, tired
computer joke.)
This chapter explains how to create new user accounts, how to modify the properties of those accounts,
and how to remove the accounts. Different Linux systems have different tools for doing this.
What's an account?
When a computer is used by many people it is usually necessary to differentiate between the users, for
example, so that their private files can be kept private. This is important even if the computer can only be
used by a single person at a time, as with most microcomputers. 1 Thus, each user is given a unique
username, and that name is used to log in.
There's more to a user than just a name, however. An account is all the files, resources, and information
belonging to one user. The term hints at banks, and in a commercial system each account usually has
some money attached to it, and that money vanishes at different speeds depending on how much the user
stresses the system. For example, disk space might have a price per megabyte and day, and processing
time might have a price per second.
Creating a user
The Linux kernel itself treats users are mere numbers. Each user is identified by a unique integer, the
user id or uid, because numbers are faster and easier for a computer to process than textual names. A
separate database outside the kernel assigns a textual name, the username, to each user id. The database
contains additional information as well.
To create a user, you need to add information about the user to the user database, and create a home
directory for him. It may also be necessary to educate the user, and set up a suitable initial environment
for him.
Most Linux distributions come with a program for creating accounts. There are several such programs
available. Two command line alternatives are adduser and useradd; there may be a GUI tool as well.
Whatever the program, the result is that there is little if any manual work to be done. Even if the details
are many and intricate, these programs make everything seem trivial. However, the section called
Creating a user by hand describes how to do it by hand.
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Chapter 9. Managing user accounts
/etc/passwd and other informative files
The basic user database in a Unix system is the text file, /etc/passwd (called the password file), which
lists all valid usernames and their associated information. The file has one line per username, and is
divided into seven colon­delimited fields:
. Username.
. Password, in an encrypted form.
. Numeric user id.
. Numeric group id.
. Full name or other description of account.
. Home directory.
. Login shell (program to run at login).
The format is explained in more detail on the passwd manual page.
Any user on the system may read the password file, so that they can, for example, learn the name of
another user. This means that the password (the second field) is also available to everyone. The password
file encrypts the password, so in theory there is no problem. However, the encryption is breakable,
especially if the password is weak (e.g., it is short or it can be found in a dictionary). Therefore it is not a
good idea to have the password in the password file.
Many Linux systems have shadow passwords. This is an alternative way of storing the password: the
encrypted password is stored in a separate file, /etc/shadow, which only root can read. The
/etc/passwd file only contains a special marker in the second field. Any program that needs to verify a
user is setuid, and can therefore access the shadow password file. Normal programs, which only use the
other fields in the password file, can't get at the password. 2
Picking numeric user and group ids
On most systems it doesn't matter what the numeric user and group ids are, but if you use the Network
filesystem (NFS), you need to have the same uid and gid on all systems. This is because NFS also
identifies users with the numeric uids. If you aren't using NFS, you can let your account creation tool
pick them automatically.
If you are using NFS, you'll have to be invent a mechanism for synchronizing account information. One
alternative is to the NIS system (see XXX network­admin­guide).
However, you should try to avoid re­using numeric uid's (and textual usernames), because the new owner
of the uid (or username) may get access to the old owner's files (or mail, or whatever).
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Chapter 9. Managing user accounts
Initial environment: /etc/skel
When the home directory for a new user is created, it is initialized with files from the /etc/skel
directory. The system administrator can create files in /etc/skel that will provide a nice default
environment for users. For example, he might create a /etc/skel/.profile that sets the EDITOR
environment variable to some editor that is friendly towards new users.
However, it is usually best to try to keep /etc/skel as small as possible, since it will be next to
impossible to update existing users' files. For example, if the name of the friendly editor changes, all
existing users would have to edit their .profile. The system administrator could try to do it
automatically, with a script, but that is almost certain going to break someone's file.
Whenever possible, it is better to put global configuration into global files, such as /etc/profile. This
way it is possible to update it without breaking users' own setups.
Creating a user by hand
To create a new account manually, follow these steps:
. Edit /etc/passwd with vipw and add a new line for the new account. Be careful with the syntax. Do
not edit directly with an editor! vipw locks the file, so that other commands won't try to update it at
the same time. You should make the password field be `*', so that it is impossible to log in.
. Similarly, edit /etc/group with vigr, if you need to create a new group as well.
. Create the home directory of the user with mkdir.
. Copy the files from /etc/skel to the new home directory.
. Fix ownerships and permissions with chown and chmod. The ­R option is most useful. The correct
permissions vary a little from one site to another, but usually the following commands do the right
thing:
cd /home/newusername
chown ­R username.group .
chmod ­R go=u,go­w .
chmod go= .
. Set the password with passwd.
After you set the password in the last step, the account will work. You shouldn't set it until everything
else has been done, otherwise the user may inadvertently log in while you're still copying the files.
It is sometimes necessary to create dummy accounts 3 that are not used by people. For example, to set up
an anonymous FTP server (so that anyone can download files from it, without having to get an account
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Chapter 9. Managing user accounts
first), you need to create an account called ftp. In such cases, it is usually not necessary to set the
password (last step above). Indeed, it is better not to, so that no­one can use the account, unless they first
become root, since root can become any user.
Changing user properties
There are a few commands for changing various properties of an account (i.e., the relevant field in
/etc/passwd):
chfn
Change the full name field.
chsh
Change the login shell.
passwd
Change the password.
The super­user may use these commands to change the properties of any account. Normal users can only
change the properties of their own account. It may sometimes be necessary to disable these commands
(with chmod) for normal users, for example in an environment with many novice users.
Other tasks need to be done by hand. For example, to change the username, you need to edit
/etc/passwd directly (with vipw, remember). Likewise, to add or remove the user to more groups, you
need to edit /etc/group (with vigr). Such tasks tend to be rare, however, and should be done with
caution: for example, if you change the username, e­mail will no longer reach the user, unless you also
create a mail alias. 4
Removing a user
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Chapter 9. Managing user accounts
To remove a user, you first remove all his files, mailboxes, mail aliases, print jobs, cron and at jobs, and
all other references to the user. Then you remove the relevant lines from /etc/passwd and
/etc/group (remember to remove the username from all groups it's been added to). It may be a good
idea to first disable the account (see below), before you start removing stuff, to prevent the user from
using the account while it is being removed.
Remember that users may have files outside their home directory. The find command can find them:
find / ­user username
However, note that the above command will take a long time, if you have large disks. If you mount
network disks, you need to be careful so that you won't trash the network or the server.
Some Linux distributions come with special commands to do this; look for deluser or userdel. However,
it is easy to do it by hand as well, and the commands might not do everything.
Disabling a user temporarily
It is sometimes necessary to temporarily disable an account, without removing it. For example, the user
might not have paid his fees, or the system administrator may suspect that a cracker has got the password
of that account.
The best way to disable an account is to change its shell into a special program that just prints a message.
This way, whoever tries to log into the account, will fail, and will know why. The message can tell the
user to contact the system administrator so that any problems may be dealt with.
It would also be possible to change the username or password to something else, but then the user won't
know what is going on. Confused users mean more work. 5
A simple way to create the special programs is to write `tail scripts':
#!/usr/bin/tail +2
This account has been closed due to a security breach.
Please call 555­1234 and wait for the men in black to arrive.
The first two characters (`#!') tell the kernel that the rest of the line is a command that needs to be run to
interpret this file. The tail command in this case outputs everything except the first line to the standard
output.
If user billg is suspected of a security breach, the system administrator would do something like this:
# chsh ­s /usr/local/lib/no­login/security billg
# su ­ tester
This account has been closed due to a security breach.
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Chapter 9. Managing user accounts
Please call 555­1234 and wait for the men in black to arrive.
#
The purpose of the su is to test that the change worked, of course.
Tail scripts should be kept in a separate directory, so that their names don't interfere with normal user
commands.
Notes
1. It might be quite embarrassing if my sister could read my love letters.
2. Yes, this means that the password file has all the information about a user except his password. The
wonder of development.
3. Surreal users?
4. The user's name might change due to marriage, for example, and he might want to have his username
reflect his new name.
5. But they can be so fun, if you're a BOFH.
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Chapter 10. Backups
Hardware is indeterministically reliable.
Software is deterministically unreliable.
People are indeterministically unreliable.
Nature is deterministically reliable.
This chapter explains about why, how, and when to make backups, and how to restore things from
backups.
On the importance of being backed up
Your data is valuable. It will cost you time and effort re­create it, and that costs money or at least
personal grief and tears; sometimes it can't even be re­created, e.g., if it is the results of some
experiments. Since it is an investment, you should protect it and take steps to avoid losing it.
There are basically four reasons why you might lose data: hardware failures, software bugs, human
action, or natural disasters. 1 Although modern hardware tends to be quite reliable, it can still break
seemingly spontaneously. The most critical piece of hardware for storing data is the hard disk, which
relies on tiny magnetic fields remaining intact in a world filled with electromagnetic noise. Modern
software doesn't even tend to be reliable; a rock solid program is an exception, not a rule. Humans are
quite unreliable, they will either make a mistake, or they will be malicious and destroy data on purpose.
Nature might not be evil, but it can wreak havoc even when being good. All in all, it is a small miracle
that anything works at all.
Backups are a way to protect the investment in data. By having several copies of the data, it does not
matter as much if one is destroyed (the cost is only that of the restoration of the lost data from the
backup).
It is important to do backups properly. Like everything else that is related to the physical world, backups
will fail sooner or later. Part of doing backups well is to make sure they work; you don't want to notice
that your backups didn't work. 2 Adding insult to injury, you might have a bad crash just as you're
making the backup; if you have only one backup medium, it might destroyed as well, leaving you with
the smoking ashes of hard work. 3 Or you might notice, when trying to restore, that you forgot to back up
something important, like the user database on a 15000 user site. Best of all, all your backups might be
working perfectly, but the last known tape drive reading the kind of tapes you used was the one that now
has a bucketful of water in it.
When it comes to backups, paranoia is in the job description.
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Chapter 10. Backups
Selecting the backup medium
The most important decision regarding backups is the choice of backup medium. You need to consider
cost, reliability, speed, availability, and usability.
Cost is important, since you should preferably have several times more backup storage than what you
need for the data. A cheap medium is usually a must.
Reliability is extremely important, since a broken backup can make a grown man cry. A backup medium
must be able to hold data without corruption for years. The way you use the medium affects it reliability
as a backup medium. A hard disk is typically very reliable, but as a backup medium it is not very
reliable, if it is in the same computer as the disk you are backing up.
Speed is usually not very important, if backups can be done without interaction. It doesn't matter if a
backup takes two hours, as long as it needs no supervision. On the other hand, if the backup can't be
done when the computer would otherwise be idle, then speed is an issue.
Availability is obviously necessary, since you can't use a backup medium if it doesn't exist. Less obvious
is the need for the medium to be available even in the future, and on computers other than your own.
Otherwise you may not be able to restore your backups after a disaster.
Usability is a large factor in how often backups are made. The easier it is to make backups, the better. A
backup medium mustn't be hard or boring to use.
The typical alternatives are floppies and tapes. Floppies are very cheap, fairly reliable, not very fast, very
available, but not very usable for large amounts of data. Tapes are cheap to somewhat expensive, fairly
reliable, fairly fast, quite available, and, depending on the size of the tape, quite comfortable.
There are other alternatives. They are usually not very good on availability, but if that is not a problem,
they can be better in other ways. For example, magneto­optical disks can have good sides of both floppies
(they're random access, making restoration of a single file quick) and tapes (contain a lot of data).
Selecting the backup tool
There are many tools that can be used to make backups. The traditional UNIX tools used for backups are
tar, cpio, and dump. In addition, there are large number of third party packages (both freeware and
commercial) that can be used. The choice of backup medium can affect the choice of tool.
tar and cpio are similar, and mostly equivalent from a backup point of view. Both are capable of storing
files on tapes, and retrieving files from them. Both are capable of using almost any media, since the
kernel device drivers take care of the low level device handling and the devices all tend to look alike to
user level programs. Some UNIX versions of tar and cpio may have problems with unusual files
(symbolic links, device files, files with very long pathnames, and so on), but the Linux versions should
handle all files correctly.
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Chapter 10. Backups
dump is different in that it reads the filesystem directly and not via the filesystem. It is also written
specifically for backups; tar and cpio are really for archiving files, although they work for backups as
well.
Reading the filesystem directly has some advantages. It makes it possible to back files up without
affecting their time stamps; for tar and cpio, you would have to mount the filesystem read­only first.
Directly reading the filesystem is also more effective, if everything needs to be backed up, since it can be
done with much less disk head movement. The major disadvantage is that it makes the backup program
specific to one filesystem type; the Linux dump program understands the ext2 filesystem only.
dump also directly supports backup levels (which we'll be discussing below); with tar and cpio this has
to be implemented with other tools.
A comparison of the third party backup tools is beyond the scope of this book. The Linux Software Map
lists many of the freeware ones.
Simple backups
A simple backup scheme is to back up everything once, then back up everything that has been modified
since the previous backup. The first backup is called a full backup, the subsequent ones are incremental
backups. A full backup is often more laborius than incremental ones, since there is more data to write to
the tape and a full backup might not fit onto one tape (or floppy). Restoring from incremental backups
can be many times more work than from a full one. Restoration can be optimized so that you always
back up everything since the previous full backup; this way, backups are a bit more work, but there
should never be a need to restore more than a full backup and an incremental backup.
If you want to make backups every day and have six tapes, you could use tape 1 for the first full backup
(say, on a Friday), and tapes 2 to 5 for the incremental backups (Monday through Thursday). Then you
make a new full backup on tape 6 (second Friday), and start doing incremental ones with tapes 2 to 5
again. You don't want to overwrite tape 1 until you've got a new full backup, lest something happens
while you're making the full backup. After you've made a full backup to tape 6, you want to keep tape 1
somewhere else, so that when your other backup tapes are destroyed in the fire, you still have at least
something left. When you need to make the next full backup, you fetch tape 1 and leave tape 6 in its
place.
If you have more than six tapes, you can use the extra ones for full backups. Each time you make a full
backup, you use the oldest tape. This way you can have full backups from several previous weeks, which
is good if you want to find an old, now deleted file, or an old version of a file.
Making backups with tar
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Chapter 10. Backups
A full backup can easily be made with tar:
# tar ­create ­file /dev/ftape /usr/src
tar: Removing leading / from absolute path names in the archive
#
The example above uses the GNU version of tar and its long option names. The traditional version of tar
only understands single character options. The GNU version can also handle backups that don't fit on
one tape or floppy, and also very long paths; not all traditional versions can do these things. (Linux only
uses GNU tar.)
If your backup doesn't fit on one tape, you need to use the ­multi­volume (­M) option:
# tar ­cMf /dev/fd0H1440 /usr/src
tar: Removing leading / from absolute path names in the archive
Prepare volume #2 for /dev/fd0H1440 and hit return:
#
Note that you should format the floppies before you begin the backup, or else use another window or
virtual terminal and do it when tar asks for a new floppy.
After you've made a backup, you should check that it is OK, using the ­compare (­d) option:
# tar ­compare ­verbose ­f /dev/ftape
usr/src/
usr/src/linux
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/
....
#
Failing to check a backup means that you will not notice that your backups aren't working until after
you've lost the original data.
An incremental backup can be done with tar using the ­newer (­N) option:
# tar ­create ­newer '8 Sep 1995' ­file /dev/ftape /usr/src ­verbose
tar: Removing leading / from absolute path names in the archive
usr/src/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/linux/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/linux/modules/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/asm­generic/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/asm­i386/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/asm­mips/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/asm­alpha/
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Chapter 10. Backups
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/asm­m68k/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/asm­sparc/
usr/src/patch­1.2.11.gz
#
Unfortunately, tar can't notice when a file's inode information has changed, for example, that it's
permission bits have been changed, or when its name has been changed. This can be worked around
using find and comparing current filesystem state with lists of files that have been previously backed up.
Scripts and programs for doing this can be found on Linux ftp sites.
Restoring files with tar
The ­extract (­x) option for tar extracts files:
# tar ­extract ­same­permissions ­verbose ­file /dev/fd0H1440
usr/src/
usr/src/linux
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/linux/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/linux/hdreg.h
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/linux/kernel.h
...
#
You also extract only specific files or directories (which includes all their files and subdirectories) by
naming on the command line:
# tar xpvf /dev/fd0H1440 usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/linux/hdreg.h
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/linux/hdreg.h
#
Use the ­list (­t) option, if you just want to see what files are on a backup volume:
# tar ­list ­file /dev/fd0H1440
usr/src/
usr/src/linux
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/linux/
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/linux/hdreg.h
usr/src/linux­1.2.10­includes/include/linux/kernel.h
...
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Chapter 10. Backups
#
Note that tar always reads the backup volume sequentially, so for large volumes it is rather slow. It is not
possible, however, to use random access database techniques when using a tape drive or some other
sequential medium.
tar doesn't handle deleted files properly. If you need to restore a filesystem from a full and an
incremental backup, and you have deleted a file between the two backups, it will exist again after you
have done the restore. This can be a big problem, if the file has sensitive data that should no longer be
available.
Multilevel backups
The simple backup method outlined in the previous section is often quite adequate for personal use or
small sites. For more heavy duty use, multilevel backups are more appropriate.
The simple method has two backup levels: full and incremental backups. This can be generalized to any
number of levels. A full backup would be level 0, and the different levels of incremental backups levels
1, 2, 3, etc. At each incremental backup level you back up everything that has changed since the previous
backup at the same or a previous level.
The purpose for doing this is that it allows a longer backup history cheaply. In the example in the
previous section, the backup history went back to the previous full backup. This could be extended by
having more tapes, but only a week per new tape, which might be too expensive. A longer backup history
is useful, since deleted or corrupted files are often not noticed for a long time. Even a version of a file
that is not very up to date is better than no file at all.
With multiple levels the backup history can be extended more cheaply. For example, if we buy ten tapes,
we could use tapes 1 and 2 for monthly backups (first Friday each month), tapes 3 to 6 for weekly
backups (other Fridays; note that there can be five Fridays in one month, so we need four more tapes),
and tapes 7 to 10 for daily backups (Monday to Thursday). With only four more tapes, we've been able
to extend the backup history from two weeks (after all daily tapes have been used) to two months. It is
true that we can't restore every version of each file during those two months, but what we can restore is
often good enough.
Figure 10­1 shows which backup level is used each day, and which backups can be restored from at the
end of the month.
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Chapter 10. Backups
Figure 10­1. A sample multilevel backup schedule.
Mon
Mon
Mon
Mon
Mon Mon
Mon
Mon
Mon
1 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2
2 2
31
29
22
15
8
1
2 2
2 1 1 1
2 2 2 2 2 2
2 2 2 2
2 2 Backup level
31 Day of month
29
22
15
8
2 2
2 2 2
2
1
2
0
1 3 4 5 6 2
0
3 4 5
Restorable
Tape number
Backup levels can also be used to keep filesystem restoration time to a minimum. If you have many
incremental backups with monotonously growing level numbers, you need to restore all of them if you
need to rebuild the whole filesystem. Instead you can use level numbers that aren't monotonous, and
keep down the number of backups to restore.
To minimize the number of tapes needed to restore, you could use a smaller level for each incremental
tape. However, then the time to make the backups increases (each backup copies everything since the
previous full backup). A better scheme is suggested by the dump manual page and described by the table
XX (efficient­backup­levels). Use the following succession of backup levels: 3, 2, 5, 4, 7, 6, 9, 8, 9, etc.
This keeps both the backup and restore times low. The most you have to backup is two day's worth of
work. The number of tapes for a restore depends on how long you keep between full backups, but it is
less than in the simple schemes.
Table 10­1. Efficient backup scheme using many backup levels
Tape Level Backup (days) Restore tapes
1 0 n/a 1
2 3 1 1, 2
3 2 2 1, 3
4 5 1 1, 2, 4
5 4 2 1, 2, 5
6 7 1 1, 2, 5, 6
7 6 2 1, 2, 5, 7
8 9 1 1, 2, 5, 7, 8
9 8 2 1, 2, 5, 7, 9
10 9 1 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10
11 9 1 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11
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Chapter 10. Backups
Tape Level Backup (days) Restore tapes
... 9 1 1, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 11, ...
A fancy scheme can reduce the amount of labor needed, but it does mean there are more things to keep
track of. You must decide if it is worth it.
dump has built­in support for backup levels. For tar and cpio it must be implemented with shell scripts.
What to back up
You want to back up as much as possible. The major exception is software that can be easily reinstalled, 4
but even they may have configuration files that it is important to back up, lest you need to do all the work
to configure them all over again. Another major exception is the /proc filesystem; since that only
contains data that the kernel always generates automatically, it is never a good idea to back it up.
Expecially the /proc/kcore file is unnecessary, since it is just an image of your current physical
memory; it's pretty large as well.
Gray areas include the news spool, log files, and many other things in /var. You must decide what you
consider important.
The obvious things to back up are user files (/home) and system configuration files (/etc, but possibly
other things scattered all over the filesystem).
Compressed backups
Backups take a lot of space, which can cost quite a lot of money. To reduce the space needed, the
backups can be compressed. There are several ways of doing this. Some programs have support for for
compression built in; for example, the ­gzip (­z) option for GNU tar pipes the whole backup through
the gzip compression program, before writing it to the backup medium.
Unfortunately, compressed backups can cause trouble. Due to the nature of how compression works, if a
single bit is wrong, all the rest of the compressed data will be unusable. Some backup programs have
some built in error correction, but no method can handle a large number of errors. This means that if the
backup is compressed the way GNU tar does it, with the whole output compressed as a unit, a single
error makes all the rest of the backup lost. Backups must be reliable, and this method of compression is
not a good idea.
An alternative way is to compress each file separately. This still means that the one file is lost, but all
other files are unharmed. The lost file would have been corrupted anyway, so this situation is not much
worse than not using compression at all. The afio program (a variant of cpio) can do this.
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Chapter 10. Backups
Compression takes some time, which may make the backup program unable to write data fast enough for
a tape drive. 5 This can be avoided by buffering the output (either internally, if the backup program if
smart enough, or by using another program), but even that might not work well enough. This should only
be a problem on slow computers.
Notes
1. The fifth reason is ``something else''.
2. Don't laugh. This has happened to several people.
3. Been there, done that...
4. You get to decide what's easy. Some people consider installing from dozens of floppies easy.
5. If a tape drive doesn't data fast enough, it has to stop; this makes backups even slower, and can be
bad for the tape and the drive.
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Chapter 11. Keeping Time
``Time is an illusion. Lunchtime double so.'' (Douglas Adams.)
This chapter explains how a Linux system keeps time, and what you need to do to avoid causing trouble.
Usually, you don't need to do anything about time, but it is good to understand it.
Time zones
Time measurement is based on mostly regular natural phenomena, such as alternating light and dark
periods caused by the rotation of the planet. The total time taken by two successive periods is constant,
but the lengths of the light and dark period vary. One simple constant is noon.
Noon is the time of the day when the Sun is at its highest position. Since the Earth is round, 1 noon
happens at different times in different places. This leads to the concept of local time. Humans measure
time in many units, most of which are tied to natural phenomena like noon. As long as you stay in the
same place, it doesn't matter that local times differ.
As soon as you need to communicate with distant places, you'll notice the need for a common time. In
modern times, most of the places in the world communicate with most other places in the world, so a
global standard for measuring time has been defined. This time is called universal time (UT or UTC,
formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time or GMT, since it used to be local time in Greenwich,
England). When people with different local times need to communicate, they can express times in
universal time, so that there is no confusion about when things should happen.
Each local time is called a time zone. While geography would allow all places that have noon at the same
time have the same time zone, politics makes it difficult. For various reasons, many countries use
daylight savings time, that is, they move their clocks to have more natural light while they work, and then
move the clocks back during winter. Other countries do not do this. Those that do, do not agree when the
clocks should be moved, and they change the rules from year to year. This makes time zone conversions
definitely non­trivial.
Time zones are best named by the location or by telling the difference between local and universal time.
In the US and some other countries, the local time zones have a name and a three letter abbreviation. The
abbreviations are not unique, however, and should not be used unless the country is also named. It is
better to talk about the local time in, say, Helsinki, than about East European time, since not all countries
in Eastern Europe follow the same rules.
Linux has a time zone package that knows about all existing time zones, and that can easily be updated
when the rules change. All the system administrator needs to do is to select the appropriate time zone.
Also, each user can set his own time zone; this is important since many people work with computers in
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Chapter 11. Keeping Time
different countries over the Internet. When the rules for daylight savings time change in your local time
zone, make sure you'll upgrade at least that part of your Linux system. Other than setting the system
time zone and upgrading the time zone data files, there is little need to bother about time.
The hardware and software clocks
A personal computer has a battery driven hardware clock. The battery ensures that the clock will work
even if the rest of the computer is without electricity. The hardware clock can be set from the BIOS setup
screen or from whatever operating system is running.
The Linux kernel keeps track of time independently from the hardware clock. During the boot, Linux
sets its own clock to the same time as the hardware clock. After this, both clocks run independently.
Linux maintains its own clock because looking at the hardware is slow and complicated.
The kernel clock always shows universal time. This way, the kernel does not need to know about time
zones at all. The simplicity results in higher reliability and makes it easier to update the time zone
information. Each process handles time zone conversions itself (using standard tools that are part of the
time zone package).
The hardware clock can be in local time or in universal time. It is usually better to have it in universal
time, because then you don't need to change the hardware clock when daylight savings time begins or
ends (UTC does not have DST). Unfortunately, some PC operating systems, including MS­DOS,
Windows, and OS/2, assume the hardware clock shows local time. Linux can handle either, but if the
hardware clock shows local time, then it must be modified when daylight savings time begins or ends
(otherwise it wouldn't show local time).
Showing and setting time
In the Debian system, the system time zone is determined by the symbolic link /etc/localtime. This
link points at a time zone data file that describes the local time zone. The time zone data files are stored
in /usr/lib/zoneinfo. Other Linux distributions may do this differently.
A user can change his private time zone by setting the TZ environment variable. If it is unset, the system
time zone is assumed. The syntax of the TZ variable is described in the tzset manual page.
The date command shows the current date and time. 2 For example:
$ date
Sun Jul 14 21:53:41 EET DST 1996
$
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Chapter 11. Keeping Time
That time is Sunday, 14th of July, 1996, at about ten before ten at the evening, in the time zone called
``EET DST'' (which might be East European Daylight Savings Time). date can also show the univeral
time:
$ date ­u
Sun Jul 14 18:53:42 UTC 1996
Sun Jul 14 18:53:42 UTC 1996
$
date is also used to set the kernel's software clock:
# date 07142157
Sun Jul 14 21:57:00 EET DST 1996
# date
Sun Jul 14 21:57:02 EET DST 1996
#
See the date manual page for more details; the syntax is a bit arcane. Only root can set the time. While
each user can have his own time zone, the clock is the same for everyone.
date only shows or sets the software clock. The clock commands syncronizes the hardware and software
clocks. It is used when the system boots, to read the hardware clock and set the software clock. If you
need to set both clocks, you first set the software clock with date, and then the hardware clock with
clock ­w.
The ­u option to clock tells it that the hardware clock is in universal time. You must use the ­u option
correctly. If you don't, your computer will be quite confused about what the time is.
The clocks should be changed with care. Many parts of a Unix system require the clocks to work
correctly. For example, the cron daemon runs commands periodically. If you change the clock, it can be
confused of whether it needs to run the commands or not. On one early Unix system, someone set the
clock twenty years into the future, and cron wanted to run all the periodic commands for twenty years all
at once. Current versions of cron can handle this correctly, but you should still be careful. Big jumps or
backward jumps are more dangeours than smaller or forward ones.
When the clock is wrong
The Linux software clock is not always accurate. It is kept running by a periodic timer interrupt
generated by PC hardware. If the system has too many processes running, it may take too long to service
the timer interrupt, and the software clock starts slipping behind. The hardware clock runs independently
and is usually more accurate. If you boot your computer often (as is the case for most systems that aren't
servers), it will usually keep fairly accurate time.
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Chapter 11. Keeping Time
If you need to adjust the hardware clock, it is usually simplest to reboot, go into the BIOS setup screen,
and do it from there. This avoids all trouble that changing system time might cause. If doing it via BIOS
is not an option, set the new time with date and clock (in that order), but be prepared to reboot, if some
part of the system starts acting funny.
A networked computer (even if just over the modem) can check its own clock automatically, by
comparing it to some other computer's time. If the other computer is known to keep very accurate time,
then both computers will keep accurate time. This can be done by using the rdate and netdate
commands. Both check the time of a remote computer (netdate can handle several remote computers),
and set the local computer's time to that. By running one these commands regularly, your computer will
keep as accurate time as the remote computer.
XXX say something intelligent about NTP
Notes
1. According to recent research.
2. Beware of the time command, which does not show the current time.
104

Glossary (DRAFT)
``The Librarian of the Unseen University had unilaterally decided to aid comprehension by producing an
Orang­utan/Human Dictionary. He'd been working on it for three months. It wasn't easy. He'd got as far as
`Oook.''' (Terry Pratchett, ``Men At Arms'')
This is a short list of word definitions for concepts relating to Linux and system administration.
ambition
The act of writing funny sentences in the hope of getting them into the Linux cookie file.
application program
Software that does something useful. The results of using an application program is what the
computer was bought for. See also system program, operating system.
daemon
A process lurking in the background, usually unnoticed, until something triggers it into action. For
example, the update daemon wakes up every thirty seconds or so to flush the buffer cache, and the
sendmail daemon awakes whenever someone sends mail.
file system
The methods and data structures that an operating system uses to keep track of files on a disk or
partition; the way the files are organized on the disk. Also used about a partition or disk that is used
to store the files or the type of the filesystem.
glossary
A list of words and explanations of what they do. Not to be confused with a dictionary, which is also
a list of words and explanations.
kernel
105

Glossary (DRAFT)
Part of an operating system that implements the interaction with hardware and the sharing of
resources. See also system program.
operating system
Software that shares a computer system's resources (processor, memory, disk space, network
bandwidth, and so on) between users and the application programs they run. Controls access to the
system to provide security. See also kernel, system program, application program.
system call
The services provided by the kernel to application programs, and the way in which they are invoked.
See section 2 of the manual pages.
system program
Programs that implement high level functionality of an operating system, i.e., things that aren't
directly dependent on the hardware. May sometimes require special privileges to run (e.g., for
delivering electronic mail), but often just commonly thought of as part of the system (e.g., a
compiler). See also application program, kernel, operating system.
106