Workbook 5.

The Linux Filesystem

Workbook 5. The Linux Filesystem
Table of Contents
1. File Details ..............................................................................................................................................5
Discussion ..........................................................................................................................................5
How Linux Save Files ..............................................................................................................5
What’s in an inode? ..................................................................................................................6
Viewing inode information with the stat command.................................................................8
Viewing inode information with the ls command ....................................................................9
Identifying Files by Inode ......................................................................................................10
Examples..........................................................................................................................................11
Comparing file sizes with ls -s and ls -l..................................................................................11
Listing files, sorted by modify time........................................................................................11
Decorating listings with ls -F .................................................................................................12
Online Exercises...............................................................................................................................13
Viewing file metadata .............................................................................................................13
Questions..........................................................................................................................................14
2. Hard and Soft Links ............................................................................................................................18
Discussion ........................................................................................................................................18
The Case for Hard Links ........................................................................................................18
Hard Link Details ...................................................................................................................18
The Case for Soft Links..........................................................................................................20
Soft Link Details.....................................................................................................................21
Creating Links with the ln Command ....................................................................................22
Issues with Soft Links ............................................................................................................23
Comparing Hard and Soft Links.............................................................................................25
Examples..........................................................................................................................................26
Working with hard links .........................................................................................................26
Working with soft links ..........................................................................................................27
Working with soft links and directories..................................................................................28
Online Exercises...............................................................................................................................28
Creating and Managing Links ................................................................................................28
Sharing a Hard Linked File ....................................................................................................29
Questions..........................................................................................................................................31
3. Directories and Device Nodes .............................................................................................................34
Discussion ........................................................................................................................................34
Directories ..............................................................................................................................34
Device Nodes..........................................................................................................................37
Examples..........................................................................................................................................41
Interpreting Directory Links Counts ......................................................................................41
Questions..........................................................................................................................................42
4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting ......................................................................................................46
Discussion ........................................................................................................................................46
Disk Devices...........................................................................................................................46
Low Level Access to Drives ...................................................................................................47
Filesystems .............................................................................................................................48
Mounting Filesystems ............................................................................................................50
Examples..........................................................................................................................................54

iii
 Using an Unformatted Floppy ................................................................................................55
Using a DOS Formatted Floppy .............................................................................................55
Floppy Images ........................................................................................................................56
Online Exercises...............................................................................................................................57
Using Floppies........................................................................................................................57
Imaging a Floppy....................................................................................................................59
Questions..........................................................................................................................................60
5. Locating Files with locate and find.....................................................................................................64
Discussion ........................................................................................................................................64
Locating Files .........................................................................................................................64
Using Locate...........................................................................................................................64
Using find...............................................................................................................................65
Examples..........................................................................................................................................69
Using locate............................................................................................................................69
Using find...............................................................................................................................70
Using find to Execute Commands on Files ............................................................................71
Online Exercises...............................................................................................................................71
Locating files ..........................................................................................................................71
Questions..........................................................................................................................................72
6. Compressing Files: gzip and bzip2.....................................................................................................75
Discussion ........................................................................................................................................75
Why Compress Files?.............................................................................................................75
Standard Linux Compression Utilities ...................................................................................75
Other Compression Utilities ...................................................................................................76
Examples..........................................................................................................................................76
Working with gzip ..................................................................................................................76
Using gzip Recursively ..........................................................................................................77
Working with bzip2................................................................................................................77
Online Exercises...............................................................................................................................78
Working with compression Utilities .......................................................................................78
Questions..........................................................................................................................................78
7. Archiving Files with tar.......................................................................................................................80
Discussion ........................................................................................................................................80
Archive Files...........................................................................................................................80
Tar Command Basics..............................................................................................................80
More About tar ......................................................................................................................82
Examples..........................................................................................................................................85
Creating a tar Archive............................................................................................................86
Tarring Directly to a Floppy ...................................................................................................86
Oops........................................................................................................................................87
Online Exercises...............................................................................................................................88
Archiving Directories .............................................................................................................88
Creating a Raw Archive on a Floppy .....................................................................................88
Questions..........................................................................................................................................89

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
iv
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
Chapter 1. File Details

Key Concepts
• The term file refers to regular files, directories, symbolic links, device nodes, and others.
• All files have common attributes: user owner, group owner, permissions, and timing information. This
information is stored in a structure called an inode.
• File names are contained in data structures called dentries (directory entries).
• A file’s inode information can be examined with the ls -l and stat commands.
• Within the Linux kernel, files are generally identified by inode number. The ls -i command can be used
to examine inode numbers.

Discussion

How Linux Save Files

Suppose elvis opens a text editor, and composes the following shopping list.

eggs
bacon
milk

When he is finished, and closes the editor, he is asked what he would like to name the file. He chooses
shopping.txt. Once he is done, he lists the contents of the directory to make sure it is there.

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l
total 4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 elvis elvis 16 Jul 11 07:54 shopping.txt

This short example illustrates the three components Linux associates with a file.

data
The data is the content of the file, in this case, the 16 bytes that compose elvis’s shopping list (13
visible characters, and 3 invisible "return" characters that indicate the end of a line). In Linux, as in
Unix, every file’s content is stored as a series of bytes.

metadata
In addition to its content, every file in Linux has extra information associated with it. The entire last
Workbook focused on some of this information, namely the file’s user owner, group owner, and
permissions. Other information, such as the last time the file was modified or read, is stored as well.
Much of this metadata is reported when you run the ls -l command. In Linux (and Unix), all of the

5
 Chapter 1. File Details

extra information associated with a file (with the important exception discussed next) is stored in a
structure called an inode.

filename
The filename is the exception to the rule. Although the filename could be considered metadata
associated with the file, it is not stored in the inode directly. Instead, the filename is stored in a
structure called a dentry. (The term dentry is a shortening of directory entry, and, as we will see in a
later Lesson, the structure is closely associated with directories.) In essence, the filename associates
a name with an inode.
In summary, there are three structures associated with every file: a dentry which contains a filename and
refers to an inode, which contains the file’s metadata and refers to the file’s data. Understanding the
relationships between these structures helps in understanding later concepts, such as links and
directories. These structures are summarized in the figure below.

Figure 1-1. File Structures

shopping.txt dentry

Type: Regular File

-rw-rw-r-- elvis elvis
Blocks: 8 Links: 1
Access: 2003-05-08 16:15:42 inode
Modify: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Change: 2003-05-08 16:15:42

eggs
bacon data
milk

What’s in an inode?
In Linux (and Unix), every file that exists in the filesystem has an associated inode which stores all of the
file’s information, except for the filename. What can be found in an inode?

File Type
In Linux (and Unix), the term file has a very general meaning: anything that exists in the filesystem
(and thus has an inode associated with it) is a file. This includes regular files and directories, which
we have already encountered, symbolic links and device nodes which we will soon encounter, and a

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 6
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy.
Any other use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or
otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being
used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

couple of more obscure creatures which are related to interprocess communication, and beyond the
scope of the course. The possible file types are listed in the table below.

Table 1-1. Linux (Unix) File Types

File Type ls abbr. Use

Regular File - Storing data
Directories d Organizing files
Symbolic Links l Referring to other files
Character Device Nodes c Accessing devices
Block Device Nodes b Accessing devices
Named Pipes p Interprocess communication
Sockets s Interprocess communication

Each of the seven file types mentioned above uses the same inode structure, so they each have the
same types of attributes: owners, permissions, modify times, etc. When listing files with ls -l, the
file type of a file is identified by the first character, using the abbreviations found in the second
column above.

Note: The term file is overloaded in Linux (and Unix), and has two meanings. When used in
sentences such as "every file has an inode", the term refers to any of the file types listed in the
table above. When used in sentences such as "The head command only works on files, not
directories", the term file is referring only to the specific type of file that holds data. Usually, the
meaning is clear from context. When a distinction has to be made, the term regular file is used,
as in "The ls -l command identifies regular files with a hyphen (-)".

Ownerships and Permissions

As discussed in the previous Workbook, every (regular) file and directory has a group owner, a user
owner, and a collection of three sets of read, write, and execute permissions. Because this
information is stored in a file’s inode, and the inode structure is the same for all files, all seven file
types use the same mechanisms for controlling who has access to them, namely chmod, chgrp, and
chown.
When listing files with ls -l, the first column displays the permissions (as well as file type), the third
the user owner, and the fourth the group owner.

Timing Information
Each inode stores three times relevant to the file, conventionally called the atime, ctime, and mtime.
These times record the last time a file was accessed (read), changed, or modified, respectively.

Table 1-2. File times

Abbreviation Name Purpose

atime Access Time Updates whenever the file’s data is read

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation 7
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print

format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

Abbreviation Name Purpose

ctime Change Time Updates whenever the file’s inode information changes
mtime Modify Time Updates whenever the file’s data changes

What’s the difference between change and modify? When a file’s data changes, the file is said to be
modified, and the mtime is updated. When a file’s inode information changes, the file is said to be
changed, and the file’s ctime is updated. Modifying a file (and thus changing the mtime) causes the
ctime to update as well, while merely reading a file (and thus changing the atime) does not cause the
ctime to udpate.

What about create time?: Often, people mistake Unix’s ctime for a "creation time". Oddly,
traditional Unix (and Linux) does not record the fixed time a file was created, a fact which many
consider a weakness in the design of the Unix filesystem.

File length and size

The inode records two measures of how large a file is: The file’s length (which is the actual number
of bytes of data), and the file’s size (which is the amount of disk space the file consumes). Because
of the low level details of how files are stored on a disk, the two differ. Generally, the file’s size
increments in chunks (usually 4 kilobytes) at a time, while the length increases byte by byte as
information is added to the file. When listing files with the ls -l command, the file’s length (in bytes)
is reported in the 5th column. When listing files with the ls -s command, the file’s size (in kilobytes)
is reported instead.

Link Count
Lastly, the inode records a file’s link count, or the number of dentries (filenames) that refer to the
file. Usually, regular files only have one name, and the link count as one. As we will find out,
however, this is not always the case. When listing files with ls -l, the second column gives the link
count.

Viewing inode information with the stat command

Red Hat Enterprise Linux includes the stat command for examining a file’s inode information in detail.
In Unix programming, a file’s collection of inode information is referred to as the status of the file. The
stat command can be thought of as reporting the status of a file.

Note: The stat command is often not installed by default in Red Hat Enterprise Linux. If you find that
your machine does not have the stat command, have your instructor install the stat RPM package
file.

stat [OPTION] FILE...

Display file (or filesystem) status information.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 8
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

Switch Effect
-c, --format=FORMAT Print only the requested information using the specified format. See the
stat(1) man page for more information.
-f, --filesystem Show information about the filesystem the file belongs to, instead of the file.

-t, --terse Print output in terse (single line) form

In the following example, madonna examines the inode information on the file /usr/games/fortune.

[madonna@station madonna]$ stat /usr/games/fortune

File: ‘/usr/games/fortune’ ➊
Size: 17795 ➋ Blocks: 40 ➌ IO Block: 4096 Regular File ➍
Device: 303h/771d Inode: 540564 Links: 1 ➎
Access: (0755/-rwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root) ➏
Access: 2003-07-09 02:36:41.000000000 -0400 ➐
Modify: 2002-08-22 04:14:02.000000000 -0400
Change: 2002-09-11 11:38:09.000000000 -0400

➊ The name of the file. This is information is not really stored in the inode, but in the dentry, as
explained above.
➋ Inconveniently for the terminology introduced above, the stat command labels the length of the file
"Size".
➌ The number of filesystem blocks the file consumes. Apparently, the stat command is using a
blocksize of 2 kilobytes. 1
➍ The file type, in this case, a regular file.
➎ The link count, or number of filenames that link to this inode. (Don’t worry if you don’t understand
this yet.)
➏ The file’s user owner, group owner, and permissions.
➐ The atime, mtime, and ctime for the file.

Viewing inode information with the ls command

While the stat command is convenient for listing the inode information of individual files, the ls
command often does a better job summarizing the information for several files. We reintroduce the ls
command, this time discussing some of its many command line switches relevant for displaying inode
information.

ls [OPTION...] FILE...

List the files FILE..., or if a directory, list the contents of the directory.

Switch Effect
-a, --all Include files that start with .

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation 9
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print

format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

Switch Effect
-d, --directory If FILE is a directory, list information about the directory itself, not the
directory’s contents.
-F, --classify Decorate filenames with one of *, /, =, @, or | to indicate file type.
-h, --human-readable Use "human readable" abbreviations when reporting file lengths.
-i, --inode List index number of each file’s inode.
-l Use long listing format
-n, --numeric-uid-gid Use numeric UIDs and GIDs, rather then usernames and groupnames.
-r, --reverse Reverse sorting order.
-R, --recursive List subdirectories recursively.
--time=WORD Report (or sort by) time specified by WORD instead of mtime. WORD may
be one of "atime", "access", "ctime", or "status".
-t Sort by modification time.

In the following example, madonna takes a long listing of all of the files in the directory /usr/games.
The different elements reported by ls -l are discussed in detail.

[madonna@station madonna]$ ls -l /usr/games/

total 28 ➊
drwxr-xr-x➋ 3➌root➍ root➎ 4096➏Jan 29 09:40➐chromium
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 17795 Aug 22 2002 fortune
dr-xrwxr-x 3 root games 4096 Apr 1 11:49 Maelstrom

➊ The total number of blocks used by files in the directory. (Note that this does not include
subdirectories).
➋ The file type and permissions of the file.
➌ The file’s link count, or the total number of dentries (filenames) that refer to this file. (Note that, for
directories, this is always greater than 1!. hmmm...)
➍ The file’s owner.
➎ The file’s group owner.
➏ The length of the file, in bytes (Note that directories have a length as well, and the length seems to
increment in blocks. hmmm....)
➐ The file’s mtime, or last time the file was modified.

Identifying Files by Inode

While people tend to use filenames to identify files, the Linux kernel usually uses the inode directly.
Within a filesystem, every inode is assigned a unique inode number. The inode number of a file can be
listed with the -i command line switch to the ls command.

[madonna@station madonna]$ ls -iF /usr/games/

540838 chromium/ 540564 fortune* 312180 Maelstrom/

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 10
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

In this example, the directory chromium has an inode number of 540838. A file can be uniquely
identified by knowing its filesystem and inode number.

Examples

Comparing file sizes with ls -s and ls -l

The user elvis is examining the sizes of executable files in the /bin directory. He first runs the ls -s
command.

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -s /bin

total 4860
4 arch 0 domainname 20 login 92 sed
96 ash 56 dumpkeys 72 ls 32 setfont
488 ash.static 12 echo 72 mail 20 setserial
12 aumix-minimal 44 ed 20 mkdir 0 sh
0 awk 4 egrep 20 mknod 16 sleep
...

Next to each file name, the ls command reports the size of the file in kilobytes. For example, the file ash
takes up 96 Kbytes of disk space. In the (abbreviated) output, that all of the sizes are divisible by four.
Apparently, when storing a file on the disk, disk space gets allocated to files in chunks of 4 Kbytes. (This
is referred to as the "blocksize" of the filesystem). Note that the file awk seems to be taking up no space.
Next, elvis examines the directory information using the ls -l command.

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l /bin

total 4860
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2644 Feb 24 19:11 arch
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 92444 Feb 6 10:20 ash
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 492968 Feb 6 10:20 ash.static
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10456 Jan 24 16:47 aumix-minimal
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Apr 1 11:11 awk -> gawk
...

This time, the lengths of the files are reported in bytes. Looking again at the file ash, the length is
reported as 92444 bytes. This is reasonable, because rounding up to the next 4 Kilobytes, we get the 96
Kbytes reported by the ls -s command. Note again the file awk. The file is not a regular file, but a
Symbolic Link, which explains why it was consuming no space. Symbolic Links will be discussed in
more detail shortly.
Lastly, elvis is curious about the permissions on the /bin directory. When he runs ls -l /bin, however, he
get a listing of the contents of the /bin directory, no the directory itself. He solves his problem by
adding the -d command line switch.

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -ld /bin

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 8 09:29 /bin

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 11
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

Listing files, sorted by modify time

The user prince is exploring the system log files found in the /var/log directory. He is curious about
recent activity on the system, so he would like to know which files have been accessed most recently. He
first takes a long listing of the directory, and begins examining the reported modify times for the files.

[prince@station prince]$ ls -l /var/log

total 16296
-rw------- 1 root root 20847 Jul 12 2002 boot.log
-rw------- 1 root root 45034 Jul 6 2002 boot.log.1
-rw------- 1 root root 29116 Jun 29 2002 boot.log.2
-rw------- 1 root root 18785 Jun 22 2002 boot.log.3
-rw------- 1 root root 15171 Jun 15 2002 boot.log.4
drwxr-xr-x 2 servlet servlet 4096 Jan 20 2002 ccm-core-cms
-rw------- 1 root root 57443 Jul 12 2002 cron
-rw------- 1 root root 62023 Jul 6 2002 cron.1
-rw------- 1 root root 74850 Jun 29 2002 cron.2
...

With 74 files to look at, prince quickly tires of skimming for recent files. Instead, he decides to let the ls
command do the hard work for him, specifying that the output should be sorted by mtime with the -t
command line switch.

[prince@station prince]$ ls -lt /var/log

total 16296
-rw------- 1 root root 57443 Jul 12 2002 cron
-rw------- 1 root root 2536558 Jul 12 2002 maillog
-rw------- 1 root root 956853 Jul 12 2002 messages
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 622464 Jul 12 2002 wtmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 22000 Jul 12 2002 rpmpkgs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 38037 Jul 12 2002 xorg.0.log
....

Now elvis easily reads the cron, maillog, and messages files as the most recently modified files.
Curious which log files are not being used, prince repeats the command, adding the -r command line
switch.

[prince@station prince]$ ls -ltr /var/log

total 16296
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 32589 Oct 23 2001 xorg.1.log.old
drwxr-xr-x 2 servlet servlet 4096 Jan 20 2002 ccm-core-cms
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 3 2002 vbox
-rwx------ 1 postgres postgres 0 Apr 1 2002 pgsql
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Apr 5 2002 samba
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 42053 May 7 2002 xorg.1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1371 May 9 2002 xorg.setup.log
-rw------- 1 root root 0 Jun 9 2002 vsftpd.log.4
...

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 12
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

Decorating listings with ls -F

The user blondie is exploring the /etc/X11 directory.

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls /etc/X11/

applnk prefdm sysconfig xorg.conf.backup xkb
desktop-menus proxymngr twm xorg.conf.wbx Xmodmap
fs rstart X xorg.conf.works Xresources
gdm serverconfig xdm XftConfig.README-OBSOLETE xserver
lbxproxy starthere xorg.conf xinit xsm

Because she does not have a color terminal, she is having a hard time distinguishing what is a regular file
and what is a directory. She adds the -F command line switch to decorate the output.

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -F /etc/X11/

applnk/ rstart/ xorg.conf Xmodmap
desktop-menus/ serverconfig/ xorg.conf.backup Xresources
fs/ starthere/ xorg.conf.wbx xserver/
gdm/ sysconfig/ xorg.conf.works xsm/
lbxproxy/ twm/ XftConfig.README-OBSOLETE
prefdm* X@ xinit/
proxymngr/ xdm/ xkb@

Now, the various files are decorated by type. Directories end in a /, symbolic links with a @, and regular
files with executable permissions (implying that they are commands to be run) end in a *.

Online Exercises

Viewing file metadata

Lab Exercise
Objective: List files by modify time
Estimated Time: 5 mins.

Specification

1. Create a file in your home directory called etc.bytime. The file should contain a long listing of the
/etc directory, sorted by modify time. The most recently modified file should be on the first line of
the file.
2. Create a file in your home directory called etc.bytime.reversed. The file should contain a long
listing of the /etc directory, reverse sorted by modify time. The most recently modified file should
be on the last line of the file.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 13
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

3. Create a file called etc.inum, which contains the inode number of the /etc directory as its only
token. (Note that this is asking for the inode of the directory itself).

Deliverables

1. A file called etc.bytime, which contains a long listing of all files in the /etc directory, sorted by modify
time, with the most recently modified file first.
2. A file called etc.bytime.reversed, which contains a long listing of all files in the /etc directory, sorted by
modify time, with the most recently modified file last.
3. A file called etc.inum, which contains the inode number of the file /etc directory as its only token.

Suggestions
The first few lines of the file etc.bytime should look like the following, although the details (such as
modify time) may differ.

total 2716
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 258 May 21 09:27 mtab
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 699 May 21 09:13 printcap
-rw-r----- 1 root smmsp 12288 May 21 09:10 aliases.db
-rw-rw-r-- 2 root root 107 May 21 09:10 resolv.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 28 May 21 09:10 yp.conf
-rw------- 1 root root 60 May 21 09:10 ioctl.save
-rw-r----- 1 root root 1 May 21 09:10 lvmtab
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 21 09:10 lvmtab.d
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 46 May 21 08:55 adjtime

Questions

1. Which of the following is not a data structure associated with a file?

( ) a. dentry
( ) b. superblock
( ) c. inode
( ) d. data (blocks)
( ) e. All of the above are data structures associated with files.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 14
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

2. Which of the following file types does not use a data structure called an inode?
( ) a. regular file
( ) b. directory
( ) c. symbolic link
( ) d. character device node
( ) e. All of the above file types use the inode data structure.

3. Which of the following information is not stored in a file’s inode?

( ) a. The file’s modify time
( ) b. The file’s permissions
( ) c. The file’s user owner
( ) d. The file’s name
( ) e. All of the above information is stored in the inode.

Use the output from the following commands to answer the next 2 questions.

[student@station student]$ stat /bin

File: "/bin"
Size: 2048 Blocks: 4 IO Block: 4096 Directory
Device: 309h/777d Inode: 44177 Links: 2
Access: (0755/drwxr-xr-x) Uid: ( 0/ root) Gid: ( 0/ root)
Access: Wed Mar 19 09:38:51 2003
Modify: Wed Jan 22 16:36:06 2003
Change: Wed Jan 22 16:36:06 2003
[student@station student]$ ls -l /usr/bin/tree
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18546 Jun 23 2002 /usr/bin/tree

4. How many blocks are in use by the directory /bin as shown above?
( ) a. 2
( ) b. 4
( ) c. 2048
( ) d. 4096

5. What are the permissions for the file /usr/bin/tree as shown above?
( ) a. 640
( ) b. 644
( ) c. 755
( ) d. 775

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 15
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

6. Which command(s) will show the size and permissions of the file /etc/passwd?
[ ] a. stat /etc/passwd
[ ] b. df -h
[ ] c. cat /etc/passwd
[ ] d. ls -l /etc/passwd

7. Which command syntax will show the owner and group of the directory /etc?
( ) a. ls /etc
( ) b. ls -l /etc
( ) c. ls -d /etc
( ) d. ls -ld /etc

8. Which time for a file is shown by the ls -l command?

( ) a. The file’s modify time
( ) b. The file’s change time
( ) c. The file’s access time
( ) d. The file’s creation time
( ) e. None of the above.

9. Which time is updated when a file is read?

( ) a. The file’s modify time
( ) b. The file’s change time
( ) c. The file’s access time
( ) d. A and C
( ) e. All of the above.

10. Which time is updated when data is appended to a file?

( ) a. The file’s modify time
( ) b. The file’s change time
( ) c. The file’s access time
( ) d. A and B
( ) e. All of the above.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 16
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied,
or otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 1. File Details

Notes
1. The term block is probably the most overloaded term in Linux (and Unix). Sometimes it refers to
disk blocks, usually 512 bytes. Sometimes it refers to block device blocks, which usually vary from 1
kbyte to 4 kbytes. Sometimes, it refers to filesystem blocks, which usually vary from 1kbyte to 4
kbytes as well. And we haven’t even started talking about the verb block, such as "a process blocking
on I/O", which is just as overloaded. Whenever you see a size reported in blocks, cringe, and assume
you are going to have to do a little figuring out which blocksize is being used.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 17
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Key Concepts
• The ln command creates two distinct types of links.
• Hard links assign multiple dentries (filenames) to a single inode.
• Soft links are distinct inodes that reference other filenames.

Discussion

The Case for Hard Links

Occasionally, Linux users want the same file to exist two separate places, or have two different names.
One approach is by creating a hard link.
Suppose elvis and blondie are collaborating on a duet. They would both like to be able to work on the
lyrics as time allows, and be able to benefit from one another’s work. Rather than copying an updated file
to one another every time they make a change, and keeping their individual copies synchronized, they
decide to create a hard link.
Blondie has set up a collaboration directory called ~/music, which is group owned and writable by
members of the group music. She has elvis do the same. She then creates the file ~/music/duet.txt,
chgrps it to the group music, and uses the ln command to link the file into elvis’s directory.

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -ld music/

drwxrwxr-x 2 blondie music 4096 Jul 13 05:45 music/
[blondie@station blondie]$ echo "Knock knock" > music/duet.txt
[blondie@station blondie]$ chgrp music music/duet.txt
[blondie@station blondie]$ ln music/duet.txt /home/elvis/music/duet.txt

Because the file was linked, and not copied, it is the same file under two names. When elvis edits
/home/elvis/music/duet.txt, he is editing /home/blondie/music/duet.txt as well.

[elvis@station elvis]$ echo "who’s there?" >> music/duet.txt

[blondie@station blondie]$ cat music/duet.txt

Knock knock
who’s there?

Hard Link Details

How are hard links implemented? When created, the file /home/blondie/music/duet.txt consists
of a dentry, an inode, and data, as illustrated below.

18
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Figure 2-1. Regular File

/home/blondie/music/duet.txt

Type: Regular File

-rw-rw-r-- blondie music
Blocks: 8 Links: 1
Access: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Modify: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Change: 2003-05-08 16:15:42

Knock knock

After using the lncommand to create the link, the file is still a single inode, but there are now two
dentries referring to the file.

Figure 2-2. Hard Link

/home/blondie/music/duet.txt /home/elvis/music/duet.txt

Type: Regular File

-rw-rw-r-- blondie music
Blocks: 8 Links: 2
Access: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Modify: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Change: 2003-05-08 16:15:42

Knock knock
Who's there?

When blondie runs the ls -l command, look closely at the second column, which reports the link count
for the file.

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -l music/duet.txt

-rw-rw-r-- 2 blondie music 25 Jul 13 06:08 music/duet.txt

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 19
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Until now, we have not been paying much attention to the link count, and it has almost always been 1 for
regular files (implying one dentry referencing one inode). Now, however, two dentries are referencing the
inode, and the file has a link count of 2. If blondie changes permissions on the file
/home/blondie/music/duet.txt, what happens to the file /home/elvis/music/duet.txt?

[blondie@station blondie]$ chmod o-r music/duet.txt

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l music/duet.txt

-rw-rw---- 2 blondie music 25 Jul 13 06:08 music/duet.txt

Because both halves of the link share the same inode, elvis sees the changed permissions as well.
What happens if blondie removes /home/blondie/music/duet.txt? The inode
/home/elvis/music/duet.txt still exists, but with one less dentry referencing it.

[blondie@station blondie]$ rm music/duet.txt

Figure 2-3. Hard link after half is removed

/home/elvis/music/duet.txt

Type: Regular File

-rw-rw---- blondie music
Blocks: 8 Links: 1
Access: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Modify: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Change: 2003-05-08 16:15:42

Knock knock
Who's there?

What would you expect the link count of the file /home/elvis/music/duet.txt to be now?

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l music/duet.txt

-rw-rw---- 1 blondie music 25 Jul 13 06:08 music/duet.txt

A little awkwardly, elvis is left with a file owned by blondie, but it is still a valid file, nonetheless. At a
low level, the rm command is not said to delete a file, but "unlink" it. A file (meaning the file’s inode and
data) are automatically deleted from the system when its link count goes to 0 (implying that there are no
longer any dentries (filenames) referencing the file).

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 20
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

The Case for Soft Links

The other approach to assigning a single file two names is called a soft link. While superficially similar,
soft links are implemented very differently from hard links.
The user madonna is obsessively organized, and has collected her regular errands into seven todo lists,
one for every day of the week.

[madonna@station madonna]$ ls todo/

friday.todo saturday.todo thursday.todo wednesday.todo
monday.todo sunday.todo tuesday.todo

She consults her todo lists multiple times a day, but finds that she has trouble remembering what day of
week it is. She would rather have a single file called today.todo, which she updates each morning. She
decides to use a soft link instead. Because today is Tuesday, she uses the same ln command that is used
for creating hard links, but adds the -s command line switch to specify a soft link.

[madonna@station todo]$ ls
friday.todo saturday.todo thursday.todo wednesday.todo
monday.todo sunday.todo tuesday.todo
[madonna@station todo]$ ln -s tuesday.todo today.todo
[madonna@station todo]$ ls -l
total 32
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 138 Jul 14 09:54 friday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 29 Jul 14 09:54 monday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 579 Jul 14 09:54 saturday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 252 Jul 14 09:54 sunday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 519 Jul 14 09:54 thursday.todo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 madonna madonna 12 Jul 14 09:55 today.todo -> tuesday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 37 Jul 14 09:54 tuesday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 6587 Jul 14 09:55 wednesday.todo

Examine closely file type (the first character of each line in the ls -l command) of the newly created file
today.todo. It is not a regular file ("-"), or a directory ("d"), but a "l", indicating a symbolic link. A
symbolic link, also referred to as a "soft" link, is a file which references another file by filename. Soft
links are similar to aliases found in other operating systems. Helpfully, the ls -l command also displays
what file the soft link refers to, where today.todo -> tuesday.todo implies the soft link titled
today.todo references the file tuesday.todo.
Now, whenever madonna references the file today.todo, she is really examining the file
tuesday.todo.

[madonna@station todo]$ cat today.todo

feed cat
take out trash
water plants
[madonna@station todo]$ cat tuesday.todo
feed cat
take out trash
water plants

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 21
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Soft Link Details

How are soft links implemented? When created, the file tuesday.txt, like most files, consists of a
dentry, an inode, and data, as illustrated below. When the soft link today.txt was created, the soft link
(unlike a hard link) really is a new file, with a newly created inode. The link is not a regular file, however,
but a symbolic link. Symbolic links, rather than storing actual data, store the name of another file. When
the Linux kernel is asked to refer to the symbolic link, the kernel automatically resolves the link by
looking up the new filename. The user (or really, the process on behalf of the user) that referred to the
symbolic link doesn’t know the difference.

Figure 2-4. Soft Links

today.todo tuesday.todo

Type: Symbolic Link Type: Regular File

lrwxrwxrwx madonna madonna -rw-rw-r-- madonna madonna
Blocks: 0 Links: 1 Blocks: 8 Links: 1
Access: 2003-05-08 16:15:42 Access: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Modify: 2003-05-08 16:15:42 Modify: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Change: 2003-05-08 16:15:42 Change: 2003-05-08 16:15:42

"tuesday.todo" feed cat

take out trash
water plants

Creating Links with the ln Command

As illustrated above, both hard links and soft links are created with the ln command.

ln [OPTION...] TARGET [LINK]

Create the link LINK referencing the file TARGET.

ln [OPTION...] TARGET... [DIRECTORY]

Create link(s) to the file(s) TARGET in the directory DIRECTORY.

Switch Effect
-f, --force clobber existing destination files

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation 22
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print

format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Switch Effect
-s, --symbolic make symbolic (soft) link instead of hard link

The ln command behaves very similarly to the cp command: if the last argument is a directory, the
command creates links in the specified directory which refer to (and are identically named) to the
preceding arguments. Unlike the cp command, if only one argument is given, the ln command will
effectively assume a last argument of ".". When specifying links, the ln command expects the name of
the original file(s) first, and the name of the link last. Reversing the order doesn’t produce the desired
results. Again, when in doubt, recall the behavior of the cp command.
In the following short example, madonna creates the file orig.txt. She then tries to make a hard link to
it called newlnk.txt, but gets the order of the arguments wrong. Realizing her mistake, she then
corrects the problem.

[madonna@station madonna]$ date > orig.txt

[madonna@station madonna]$ ln newlnk.txt orig.txt
ln: accessing ‘newlnk.txt’: No such file or directory
[madonna@station madonna]$ ln orig.txt newlnk.txt

Issues with Soft Links

Dangling Links
Soft links are susceptible to a couple of problems that hard links are not. The first is called dangling
links. What happens if madonna renames or removes the file tuesday.todo?

[madonna@station todo]$ mv tuesday.todo tuesday.hide

[madonna@station todo]$ ls -l
total 32
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 138 May 14 09:54 friday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 29 May 14 09:54 monday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 579 May 14 09:54 saturday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 252 May 14 09:54 sunday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 519 May 14 09:54 thursday.todo
lrwxrwxrwx 1 madonna madonna 12 May 14 09:55 today.todo -> tuesday.todo
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 37 May 14 10:22 tuesday.hide
-rw-rw-r-- 1 madonna madonna 6587 May 14 09:55 wednesday.todo
[madonna@station todo]$ cat today.todo
cat: today.todo: No such file or directory

The symbolic link today.todo still references the file tuesday.todo, but the file tuesday.todo no
longer exists! When madonna tries to read the contents of today.todo, she is met with an error.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 23
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Figure 2-5. Dangling Links

today.todo

Type: Symbolic Link

lrwxrwxrwx madonna madonna
Blocks: 0 Links: 1
Access: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Modify: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Change: 2003-05-08 16:15:42

"tuesday.todo"

Recursive links
The second problem that symbolic links are susceptible to is recursive links. In day to day use, recursive
links are not nearly as common as dangling links, and someone almost has to be looking for them to
create them. What if madonna created two symbolic links, link_a, which referenced a file named
link_b, and link_b, which references the file link_a, as illustrated below?

[madonna@station madonna]$ ln -s link_a link_b

[madonna@station madonna]$ ln -s link_b link_a
[madonna@station madonna]$ ls -l
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 madonna madonna 6 Jul 14 10:41 link_a -> link_b
lrwxrwxrwx 1 madonna madonna 6 Jul 14 10:41 link_b -> link_a

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 24
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Figure 2-6. Recursive Links

link_a link_b

Type: Symbolic Link Type: Symbolic Link

lrwxrwxrwx madonna madonna lrwxrwxrwx madonna madonna
Blocks: 0 Links: 1 Blocks: 0 Links: 1
Access: 2003-05-08 16:15:42 Access: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Modify: 2003-05-08 16:15:42 Modify: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Change: 2003-05-08 16:15:42 Change: 2003-05-08 16:15:42

"link_b" "link_a"

When madonna tries to read link_a, the kernel resolves link_a to link_b, which it then resolves back to
link_a, and so on. Fortunately, the kernel will only resolve a link so many times before it suspects that it
is caught in a recursive link, and gives up.

[madonna@station madonna]$ cat link_a

cat: link_a: Too many levels of symbolic links

Absolute vs. Relative Soft Links

When creating soft links, users can choose between specifying the link’s target using a relative or
absolute reference. If the soft link, and its target, are never going to be relocated, the choice doesn’t
matter. Often, however, users can’t anticipate how the files they create will be used in the future. Usually,
relative links are more resilient to unexpected changes.

Comparing Hard and Soft Links

When should a soft link be used, and when should a hard link be used? Generally, hard links are more
appropriate if both instances of the link have a reasonable use, even if the other instance didn’t exist. In
the example above, even if blondie decided not to work on the duet and removed her file, elvis could
reasonably continue to work. Soft links are generally more appropriate when one file cannot reasonably
exist without the other file. In the example above, madonna could not have tasks for "today" if she did
not have tasks for "tuesday". These are general guidelines, however, not hard and fast rules.
Sometimes, more practical restrictions make the choice between hard links and soft links easier. The
following outlines some of the differences between hard and soft links. Do not be concerned if you do
not understand the last two points, they are included for completeness.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation 25
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print

format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Table 2-1. Comparing Hard and Soft Links

Hard Links Soft Links

Directories may not be hard linked. Soft links may refer to directories.
Hard links have no concept of "original" and Soft links have a concept of "referrer" and
"copy". Once a hard link has been created, all "referred". Removing the "referred" file results in a
instances are treated equally. dangling referrer.
Hard links must refer to files in the same Soft links may span filesystems (partitions).
filesystem.
Hard links may be shared between "chroot"ed Soft links may not refer to files outside of a
directories. "chroot"ed directory.

Examples

Working with hard links

In her home directory, blondie has a file called rhyme and a directory called stuff. She takes a long
listing with ls -li, where the -i command line switch causes the ls command to print the inode number of
each file as the first column of output.
Because each inode in a filesystem has a unique inode number, the inode number can be used to identify
a file. In fact, when keeping track of files internally, the kernel usually refers to a file by inode number
rather than filename.

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -il

total 8
246085 -rw-rw-r-- 1 blondie blondie 51 Jul 18 15:29 rhyme
542526 drwxrwxr-x 2 blondie blondie 4096 Jul 18 15:34 stuff

She creates a hard link to the rhyme file, and views the directory contents again.

[blondie@station blondie]$ ln rhyme hard_link

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -li
246085 -rw-rw-r-- 2 blondie blondie 51 Jul 18 15:29 hard_link
246085 -rw-rw-r-- 2 blondie blondie 51 Jul 18 15:29 rhyme
542526 drwxrwxr-x 2 blondie blondie 4096 Jul 18 15:34 stuff

The link count for rhyme is now 2. Additionally notice that the inode number for both rhyme and
hard_link is 246085, implying that although there are two names for the file (two dentries), there is
only one inode.
If we change the permissions on rhyme, the permissions on hard_link will change as well. Why? the
two filenames refer to the same inode. Because the inode references a file’s content, they also share the
same data.

[blondie@station blondie]$ chmod 660 rhyme

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -li

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 26
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

246085 -rw-rw---- 2 blondie blondie 51 Jul 18 15:29 hard_link

246085 -rw-rw---- 2 blondie blondie 51 Jul 18 15:29 rhyme
542526 drwxrwxr-x 2 blondie blondie 4096 Jul 18 15:34 stuff
[blondie@station blondie]$ echo "Hickory, Dickory, Dock," > rhyme
[blondie@station blondie]$ echo "Three mice ran up a clock." >> hard_link
[blondie@station blondie]$ cat rhyme
Hickory, Dickory, Dock,
Three mice ran up a clock.

Moving or even removing the original file has no effect on the link file.

[blondie@station blondie]$ mv rhyme stuff

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -Rli
.:
total 8
246085 -rw-rw---- 2 blondie blondie 51 Jul 18 15:29 hard_link
542526 drwxrwxr-x 2 blondie blondie 4096 Jul 18 15:38 stuff

./stuff:
total 4
246085 -rw-rw---- 2 blondie blondie 51 Jul 18 15:29 rhyme

Working with soft links

The user blondie now repeats the exact same exercise, but uses a soft link instead of a hard link. She
starts with an identical setup as the example above.

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -li

total 8
246085 -rw-rw-r-- 1 blondie blondie 29 Jul 18 15:25 rhyme
542526 drwxrwxr-x 2 blondie blondie 4096 Jul 18 15:25 stuff

She now creates a soft link to the rhyme file, and views the directory contents again.

[blondie@station blondie]$ ln -s rhyme soft_link

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -li
total 8
246085 -rw-rw-r-- 1 blondie blondie 29 Jul 18 15:25 rhyme
250186 lrwxrwxrwx 1 blondie blondie 5 Jul 18 15:26 soft_link -> rhyme
542526 drwxrwxr-x 2 blondie blondie 4096 Jul 18 15:25 stuff

In contrast to the hard link above, the soft link exists as a distinct inode (with a distinct inode number),
and the link counts of each of the files remains 1. This implies that there are now two dentries and two
inodes. When referenced, however, the files behave identically as in the case of hard links.

[blondie@station blondie]$ echo "Hickory, Dickory, Dock," > rhyme

[blondie@station blondie]$ echo "Three mice ran up a clock." >> soft_link
[blondie@station blondie]$ cat rhyme
Hickory, Dickory, Dock,
Three mice ran up a clock.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 27
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Unlike the hardlink, the softlink cannot survive if the original file is moved or removed. Instead, blondie
is left with a dangling link.

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -liR

.:
total 4
250186 lrwxrwxrwx 1 blondie blondie 5 Jul 18 15:26 soft_link -> rhyme
542526 drwxrwxr-x 2 blondie blondie 4096 Jul 18 15:31 stuff

./stuff:
total 4
246085 -rw-rw-r-- 1 blondie blondie 51 Jul 18 15:29 rhyme
[blondie@station blondie]$ cat soft_link
cat: soft_link: No such file or directory

Working with soft links and directories

Soft links are also useful as pointers to directories. Hard links can only be used with ordinary files.

[einstein@station einstein]$ ln -s /usr/share/doc docs

[einstein@station einstein]$ ls -il
10513 lrwxrwxrwx 1 einstein einstein 14 Mar 18 20:31 docs -> /usr/share/doc
10512 -rw-rw---- 2 einstein einstein 949 Mar 18 20:10 hard_link
55326 drwxrwxr-x 2 einstein einstein 1024 Mar 18 20:28 stuff

The user einstein can now easily change to the docs directory without having to remember or type the
long absolute path.

Online Exercises

Creating and Managing Links

Lab Exercise
Objective: Create and Manage hard and soft links
Estimated Time: 10 mins.

Specification
All files should be created in your home directory.

1. Create a file called cal.orig in your home directory, which contains a text calendar of the current
month (as produced by the cal command).
2. Create a hard link to the file cal.orig, called cal.harda

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy.
28
Any other use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or
otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being
used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

3. Create a hard link to the file cal.orig, called cal.hardb

4. Create a soft link to the file cal.orig, called cal.softa
5. Remove the file cal.orig, so that the soft link you just created is now a dangling link.
6. Create a soft link to the /usr/share/doc directory, called docabs, using an absolute reference.
7. Create a soft link to the ../../usr/share/doc directory, called docrel, using a relative
reference. (Note: depending on the location of your home directory, you may need to add or remove
some .. references from the proceeding filename. Include enough so that the the soft link is a true
relative reference to the /usr/share/doc directory.
If you have finished the exercise correctly, you should be able to reproduce output similar to the
following.

[student@station student]$ ls -l
total 12
-rw-rw-r-- 2 student student 138 Jul 21 10:03 cal.harda
-rw-rw-r-- 2 student student 138 Jul 21 10:03 cal.hardb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 student student 8 Jul 21 10:03 cal.softa -> cal.orig
lrwxrwxrwx 1 student student 14 Jul 21 10:03 docabs -> /usr/share/doc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 student student 19 Jul 21 10:03 docrel -> ../../usr/share/doc

Deliverables

1. A file called cal.harda.

2. A file called cal.hardb, which is a hard link to the proceeding file.
3. A file called cal.softa, which is a dangling soft link to the nonexistent file cal.orig.
4. A file called docabs, which is a soft link to the /usr/share/doc directory, using an absolute reference.
5. A file called docrel, which is a soft link to the /usr/share/doc directory, using a relative reference.

Sharing a Hard Linked File

Lab Exercise
Objective: Share a hard linked file between two users.
Estimated Time: 15 mins.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 29
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used,
copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Specification
You would like to create a hard linked file that you will share with another user.

1. As your primary user, create a subdirectory of /tmp named after your account name, such as
/tmp/student, where student is replaced with your username.
2. Still as your primary user, create a file called /tmp/student/novel.txt, which contains the text
"Once upon a time."
[student@station student]$ mkdir /tmp/student
[student@station student]$ echo "Once Upon a Time," > /tmp/student/novel.txt
[student@station student]$ ls -al /tmp/student/
total 12
drwxrwxr-x 2 student student 4096 Jul 21 10:13 .
drwxrwxrwt 28 root root 4096 Jul 21 10:12 ..
-rw-rw-r-- 1 student student 18 Jul 21 10:13 novel.txt

3. Now log in as (or su - to) your first alternate account. Create a directory in /tmp which is named
after your alternate account, such as /tmp/student_a.
4. As your first alternate user, in your newly created directory, create a hard link to the file
/tmp/student/novel.txt, called /tmp/student_a/novel.lnk. Try to edit the file, changing
the line from "Once upon a time,", to "It was a dark and stormy night.". Why did you have
difficulties? Are you able to modify the ownerships or permissions of the file novel.lnk? Why or
Why not?
[student@station student]$ su - student_a
Password:
[student_a@station student_a]$ mkdir /tmp/student_a
[student_a@station student_a]$ ln /tmp/student/novel.txt /tmp/student_a/novel.ln
k
[student_a@station student_a]$ echo "It was a dark and stormy night." >> /tmp/st
udent_a/novel.lnk
-bash: /tmp/student_a/novel.lnk: Permission denied
5. As your primary user, adjust the permissions and/or ownerships on the file
/tmp/student/novel.txt, so that your first alternate user is able to modify the file.
6. As your first alternate user, apply the edit mentioned above. When you are finished, the file
/tmp/student_a/novel.lnk should contain only the text "It was a dark and stormy night.".

Deliverables

1. A file called /tmp/student/novel.txt, where student is replaced with the name of your primary user,
owned by your primary user. The file should have appropriate ownerships and permissions so that it can be
modified by your first alternate account. The file should contain only the text "It was a dark and stormy night.".
2. A file called /tmp/student_a/novel.lnk, where student_a is replaced with the name of your first alternate
account. The file should be a hard link to the file /tmp/student/novel.txt.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 30
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

Questions
Use the output from the following command to help answer the next 5 questions.

[student@station student]$ ls -li /usr/bin/

342997 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 Apr 1 11:18 ./bunzip2 -> bzip2
342998 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 5 Apr 1 11:18 ./bzcat -> bzip2
342999 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Apr 1 11:18 ./bzcmp -> bzdiff
343004 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 6 Apr 1 11:18 ./bzless -> bzmore
343066 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Apr 1 11:12 ./gunzip -> ../../bin/gunzip
343112 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Apr 1 11:12 ./gzip -> ../../bin/gzip
343136 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 2 Apr 1 11:21 ./lz -> uz
343123 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root 57468 Jan 24 23:42 ./rx
343123 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root 57468 Jan 24 23:42 ./rz
343065 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root 61372 Jan 24 23:42 ./sb
343065 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root 61372 Jan 24 23:42 ./sx
343065 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root 61372 Jan 24 23:42 ./sz
347486 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Jul 21 16:43 ./uncompress -> compress
343117 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root 3029 Jan 31 11:08 ./zegrep
343117 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root 3029 Jan 31 11:08 ./zfgrep
343117 -rwxr-xr-x 3 root root 3029 Jan 31 11:08 ./zgrep

Note that many lines have been omitted from the previous command’s output, leaving only a few interesting one.

1. Which of the following files share the same inode?

[ ] a. lz
[ ] b. uz
[ ] c. rx
[ ] d. sb
[ ] e. sx
[ ] f. sz

2. Removing which of the following files would create a dangling link?

[ ] a. bzip2
[ ] b. lz
[ ] c. uz
[ ] d. sb
[ ] e. compress
[ ] f. zgrep

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 31
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

3. How many files (listed or not) share inode number 343123?

( ) a. 1
( ) b. 2
( ) c. 3
( ) d. None of the above.
( ) e. It cannot be determined from the information provided.

4. Examine the lengths of the symbolic links such as bzcat, lz, and uncompress, as reported in the 6th column of
the output above. Which of the following best explains what the length of a symbolic link represents?
( ) a. The length represents the length of the filename that the symbolic link resolves to.
( ) b. The length represents the number of files which share the soft link.
( ) c. The length is the length of the file that the symbolic link resolves to.
( ) d. The length is arbitrary, and serves no purpose.
( ) e. None of the above.

Suppose the system administrator moved the /usr/bin directory, as shown.

[root@station root]# mv /usr/bin /usr/lib/bin

5. Which files in the new /usr/lib/bin directory would be dangling symbolic links?
[ ] a. bzcat
[ ] b. gunzip
[ ] c. gzip
[ ] d. lz
[ ] e. uncompress
[ ] f. zgrep

6. What is the correct command for creating a shortcut from your home directory that points to a /data/project
directory?
( ) a. ln /data/project /home/student/project
( ) b. ln /home/student/project /data/project
( ) c. ln -s /data/project /home/student/project
( ) d. ln -s /home/student/project /data/project

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 32
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 2. Hard and Soft Links

7. Projects A, B, and C all use the file /data/script. All teams want to have a copy in their own project directory
but they also want to be sure that any changes to the original file are reflected in their copies. Using project_A as an
example, which commands would accomplish this goal?
( ) a. ln /data/script /data/project_A/script
( ) b. cp /data/script /data/project_A/script
( ) c. ln -s /data/script /data/project_A/script
( ) d. ln -s /data/project_A/script /data/script
( ) e. A and C

8. The team leader of project_D wants to use the script as a starting point, but intends to modify it in a way that the
other teams will not want to use. What is the best way for to get the original script?
( ) a. ln /data/script /data/project_D/script
( ) b. cp /data/script /data/project_D/script
( ) c. ln -s /data/script /data/project_D/script
( ) d. ln -s /data/project_D/script /data/script

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 33
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

Key Concepts
• The term file refers to regular files, directories, symbolic links, device nodes, and others.
• All files have common attributes: user owner, group owner, permissions, and timing information.
• File meta-information is contained in a data structure called inodes.
• File names are contained in data structures called directory entries (dentries).
• File meta-information can be examined with the ls -l and stat commands.

Discussion

Directories

Directory Structure
Earlier, we introduced two structures associated with files, namely dentries, which associate filenames
with inodes, and inodes, which associate all of a file’s attributes with its content. We now see how these
structures relate to directories.
The user prince is using a directory called report to manage files for a report he is writing. He
recursively lists the report directory, including -a (which specifies to list "all" entries, including those
beginning with a ".") and -i (which specifies to list the inode number of a file as well as filename). What
results is the following listing of the directories and files, along with their inode number.

[prince@station prince]$ ls -iaR report

report:
592253 . 249482 .. 592255 html 592254 text

report/html:
592255 . 592253 .. 592261 chap1.html 592262 chap2.html 592263 figures

report/html/figures:
592263 . 592255 .. 592264 image1.png

report/text:
592254 . 592253 .. 592257 chap1.txt 592258 chap2.txt

Notice the files (directories) "." and ".." are included in the output. As mentioned in a previous
Workbook, the directory "." refers to a directory itself, and the directory ".." refers to the directory’s
parent. Every directory actually contains entries called . and .., though they are treated as hidden files
(because they "begin with ."), and not displayed unless -a is specified.

34
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

The same directories, files, and inode numbers are reproduced below, in an easier format.

path | inode
--------------------------------------------
report/ | 592253
|-- html | 592255
| |-- chap1.html | 592261
| |-- chap2.html | 592262
| ‘-- figures | 592263
| ‘-- image1.png | 592264
‘-- text | 592254
|-- chap1.txt | 592257
‘-- chap2.txt | 592258

As seen in the following figure of the report directory, directories have the same internal structure as
regular files: a dentry, an inode, and data. The data that directories store, however, are the dentries
associated with the files the directory is said to contain. A directory is little more than a table of dentries,
mapping filenames to the underlying inodes that represent files. When introduced, the name dentry was
said to be derived from directory entry. We now see that directories are no more complicated than that: a
directory is a collection of dentries.

Figure 3-1. The Internal Structure of Directories

report

Type: Directory
drwxrwxrwx prince prince
Blocks: 1 Links: 4
Access: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Modify: 2003-05-08 16:15:42
Change: 2003-05-08 16:15:42

"." 592253

".." 249482
"html" 592255
"text" 592254

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 35
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

Directory Links
Earlier, we observed that the link counts of directories, as reflected in the second column of the ls -l
command, was always two or greater. This follows naturally from the fact that every directory is
referenced at least twice, once by itself (as the directory "."), and once by its parent (with an actual
directory name, such as report). The following diagram of the dentries contained by the report
directory, its subdirectory html, and its subdirectory figures, helps to illustrate.

Figure 3-2. Dentry Tables for the report, report/html, and report/html/figures directories.

report

"." 592253
".." 249482
"html" 592255

"text" 592254

report/html

"." 592255
".." 592253

"chap1.html" 592261
"chap2.html" 592262

"figures" 592263

report/html/figures

"." 592263
".." 592255
"image1.png" 592264

When prince takes a long listing of the report directory, he sees the four files in the first table.

[prince@station prince]$ ls -ial report

total 16
592253 drwxrwxr-x 4 prince prince 4096 Jul 14 13:27 .
249482 drwx-----x 6 prince prince 4096 Jul 14 13:27 ..
592255 drwxrwxr-x 3 prince prince 4096 Jul 14 13:49 html
592254 drwxrwxr-x 2 prince prince 4096 Jul 14 13:49 text

Every file in the listing is a directory, and the link count (here the third column, since the inode number
has been prepended as the first column) of each is greater than or equal to two. Can we account for each

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 36
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

of the links? Let’s start by listing the references to inode number 592253 (the report directory, or
above, simply ".").

1. The entry ., found in the directory itself.

2. The parent directory (not pictured) contains an entry called report, which references the same
inode.
3. The subdirectory html contains an entry called .., which references inode 592253 as its parent
directory.
4. Likewise, the subdirectory text (not pictured) contains an entry called .., which references the
same inode.
Accounting for itself (which calls it "."), it’s parent (which calls it "report"), and its two subdirectories
(which call it ".."), we have found all four links to the inode 592253 reported by the ls -l command.
In the following listing, the report/html directory has a link count of 3. Can you find all three
references to inode number 592255 in the figure above?

[prince@station prince]$ ls -ial report/html

total 20
592255 drwxrwxr-x 3 prince prince 4096 Jul 14 13:49 .
592253 drwxrwxr-x 4 prince prince 4096 Jul 14 13:27 ..
592261 -rw-rw-r-- 1 prince prince 2012 Jul 14 13:28 chap1.html
592262 -rw-rw-r-- 1 prince prince 2012 Jul 14 13:28 chap2.html
592263 drwxrwxr-x 2 prince prince 4096 Jul 14 13:28 figures

In summary, directories are simply collections of dentries for the files the directory is said to contain,
which map filenames to inodes. Every directory contains at least two links, one from its own directory
entry ".", and one from its parent’s entry with the directory’s conventional name. Directories are
referenced by an additional link for every subdirectory, which refer to the directory as "..".

Device Nodes
We have now discussed three types of "creatures" which can exist in the Linux filesystem, namely
regular files, directories, and symbolic links. In this section, we shift gears, and discuss the last two types
of filesystem entries (that will be covered in this course), block and character device nodes.

Block and Character Device Nodes

Device nodes exist in the filesystem, but do not contain data in the same way that regular files, or even
directories and symbolic links, contain data. Instead, the job of a device node is to act as a conduit to a
particular device driver within the kernel. When a user writes to a device node, the device node transfers
the information to the appropriate device driver in the kernel. When a user would like to collect
information from a particular device, they read from that device’s associated device node, just as reading
from a file.
By convention, device nodes live within a dedicated directory called /dev. In the following, the user
elvis takes a long listing of files in the /dev directory.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 37
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l /dev

total 228
crw------- 1 root root 10, 10 Jan 30 05:24 adbmouse
crw-r--r-- 1 root root 10, 175 Jan 30 05:24 agpgart
crw------- 1 root root 10, 4 Jan 30 05:24 amigamouse
...
crw------- 1 elvis root 14, 7 Jan 30 05:24 audioctl
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 29, 0 Jan 30 05:24 aztcd
crw------- 1 elvis root 10, 128 Jan 30 05:24 beep
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 41, 0 Jan 30 05:24 bpcd
crw------- 1 root root 68, 0 Jan 30 05:24 capi20
...

As there are over 7000 entries in the /dev directory, the output has been truncated to only the first
several files. Focusing on the first character of each line, most of the files within /dev are not regular
files or directories, but instead either character device nodes ("c"), or block device nodes ("b"). The two
types of device nodes reflect the fact that device drivers in Linux fall into one of two major classes,
character devices and block devices.

Block Devices
Block devices are devices that read and write information a chunk ("block") at a time. Block devices
customarily allow random access, meaning that a block of data could be read from anywhere on the
device, in any order. Examples of block devices include hard drives, floppy drives, and CD/ROM
drives.

Character Devices
Character devices are often devices that read and write information as a stream of bytes
("characters"), and there is a natural concept of what it means to read or write the "next" character.
Examples of character devices include keyboards, mice, sound cards, and printers. Some character
device drivers support memory buffers as well.

Under the Hood: The real distinction between character and block device drivers relates to how the
device driver interacts with the Linux kernel. block devices ("disks") interact with the the unified I/O
cache, while character devices bypass the cache and interact with processes directly.

Terminals as Devices
In the following, elvis has logged onto a Linux machine on both the first and second virtual consoles. In
the first workbook, we learned how to identify terminals by name, and found that the name of the first
virtual console was tty1, and the second virtual console was tty2. Now, we can see that the "name" of
a terminal is really the name of the device node which maps to that terminal. In the following listing, the
device nodes /dev/tty1 through /dev/tty6 are the device nodes for the first 6 virtual consoles,
respectively.

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l /dev/tty[1-6]

crw--w---- 1 elvis tty 4, 1 May 14 16:06 /dev/tty1
crw--w---- 1 elvis tty 4, 2 May 14 16:06 /dev/tty2

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 38
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

crw------- 1 root root 4, 3 May 14 08:50 /dev/tty3

crw------- 1 root root 4, 4 May 14 08:50 /dev/tty4
crw------- 1 root root 4, 5 May 14 08:50 /dev/tty5
crw------- 1 root root 4, 6 May 14 08:50 /dev/tty6

In the following, elvis, working from virtual console number 1, will redirect the output of the cal
command three times; first, to a file called /tmp/cal, secondly, to the /dev/tty1 device node, and
lastly, to the /dev/tty2 device node.

[elvis@station elvis]$ cal > /tmp/cal ➊

[elvis@station elvis]$ cal > /dev/tty1 ➋
May 2003
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31
[elvis@station elvis]$ cal > /dev/tty2 ➌

➊ This case should be familiar; the output was merely redirected to a newly created file called cal.
➋ From appearances, the redirection didn’t happen, but it did. The output of the command was
redirected to the device node for the first virtual console, which did what it was "supposed to do",
namely, display all information written to it on the screen.
➌ Where did the output of the cal command go this time? The information was redirected to the
device node for the second virtual console, which did what it was "supposed to do", namely
displayed it on the second virtual console.
The second redirection merits a little more attention. When elvis redirected the output to the device node
controlling his current virtual console, /dev/tty1, the effect was as if he had performed no redirection
at all. Why? When elvis runs interactive commands without redirection, they write to the controlling
terminal’s device node by default. Redirecting the command’s output to /dev/tty1 is akin to saying
"but instead of writing your output to my terminal, write your output to my terminal."
Upon switching to the second virtual console, using the CTRL-ALT-F2 key sequence, elvis finds the
following characters on the screen.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5 (Tikanga)

Kernel 2.6.18-8.el5 on an i686

station login: elvis

Password:
Last login: Mon May 14 16:55:22 on tty1
You have new mail.
[elvis@station elvis]$ ➊ ➋May 2003
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31 ➌

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 39
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used,
copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

➊ This is where elvis’s cursor was sitting after logging in on the second virtual console, and switching
to virtual console number 1.
➋ Here is where the output of the cal command was written to the terminal. Note the lack of a linefeed
separating the output. This is not a natural, well formatted occurrence, but something odd that elvis
asked the device driver to do.
➌ Lastly, the output of the cal command tailed off, but notice that the bash shell did not offer a fresh
prompt. In fact, the bash shell didn’t even realize that the characters were written to the terminal. It’s
still waiting for elvis to enter a command.

Device Permissions, Security, and the Console User

Continuing the train of thought from above, the user elvis (who has logged onto the first two virtual
consoles, tty1 and tty2) next tries to redirect the output of the cal command to virtual console number
3, but runs into problems.

[elvis@station elvis]$ cal > /dev/tty3

-bash: /dev/tty3: Permission denied

Why was elvis not able to perform the same trick on the third virtual console? because elvis has not
logged in on the third virtual console, and therefore does not own the device. Examine again the long
listing of the ls -l virtual console device nodes:

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l /dev/tty[1-6]

crw--w---- 1 elvis tty 4, 1 May 16 13:38 /dev/tty1
crw--w---- 1 elvis tty 4, 2 May 16 13:38 /dev/tty2
crw------- 1 root root 4, 3 May 16 10:02 /dev/tty3
crw------- 1 root root 4, 4 May 16 10:02 /dev/tty4
crw------- 1 root root 4, 5 May 16 10:02 /dev/tty5
crw------- 1 root root 4, 5 May 16 10:02 /dev/tty6

Because device nodes are considered files, they also have user owners, group owners, and a collection of
permissions. When reading or writing from device nodes, permissions apply just as if reading or writing
to a regular file. This allows a system administrator (or the software on the system) to control who has
access to particular devices using a familiar technique; namely, by managing file owners and permissions.
What happens when prince logs in on the third virtual console?

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l /dev/tty[1-6]

crw--w---- 1 elvis tty 4, 1 May 16 13:38 /dev/tty1
crw--w---- 1 elvis tty 4, 2 May 16 13:38 /dev/tty2
crw--w---- 1 prince tty 4, 3 May 16 13:46 /dev/tty3
crw------- 1 root root 4, 4 May 16 10:02 /dev/tty4
crw------- 1 root root 4, 5 May 16 10:02 /dev/tty5
crw------- 1 root root 4, 6 May 16 10:02 /dev/tty6

When a user logs in, they take ownership of the device node that controls their terminal. Processes that
they run are then able to read input or write output to the terminal. In general, the permissions on device
nodes do not allow standard users to access devices directly. Two categories of exceptions occur.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
40
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used,
copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

Terminals
Because users need to be able to communicate with the system, they (or, more exactly, the processes
that they run) must be able to read from and write to the terminal they are using. Usually, part of the
process of logging into a system involves transferring ownership of the terminal’s device node to the
user.

"Console Users"
In Red Hat Enterprise Linux, users can be granted special permissions not because of who they are,
but because of where they logged in from. Namely, when a user logs into a virtual console, or the
graphical X server, they are considered a "console user". Console users are granted access to
hardware devices associated with the console, such as the floppy drive and sound card. When the
console user logs out of the system, ownerships for these devices are restored to system defaults.
None of this happens if a user logs in over the network, for example. (If the user is not sitting at the
machine, would it be reasonable for them to use the floppy drive?)
In summary, Linux (and Unix) uses device nodes to allow users access to devices on the system. The
managing of devices on a Linux system can be a large and complicated topic. As an introduction, we
have examined enough about how terminal device nodes are used to introduce the concept, and identify a
couple of advantages to the device node approach.

• When writing programs, programmers do not need to deal with device details. They can treat all input
and output as if it they were simply reading or writing to a file.
• Access to devices can be controlled through the same techniques of file ownerships and permissions
that are used for regular files.

Examples

Interpreting Directory Links Counts

The user elvis takes a long listing of the /var/spool directory. He is interested in interpreting the
subdirectory’s link counts, as listed in the second column.

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l /var/spool

total 64
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 24 16:26 anacron
drwx------ 3 daemon daemon 4096 Jun 18 02:00 at
drwxrwx--- 2 smmsp smmsp 4096 Jul 21 10:42 clientmqueue
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Jun 18 16:12 cron
drwx------ 3 lp sys 8192 Jul 18 17:38 cups
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 4096 Jan 24 18:52 lpd
drwxrwxr-x 2 root mail 4096 Jul 21 10:11 mail
drwx------ 2 root mail 8192 Jul 21 10:43 mqueue
drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 postfix
drwxr-xr-x 2 rpm rpm 4096 Apr 11 06:18 repackage
drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 4096 Apr 5 23:46 samba

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 41
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 8192 Jul 16 17:53 up2date

drwxrwxrwt 2 root root 4096 Feb 3 19:13 vbox

Noticing that it has a link count of 17, elvis concludes that the postfix directory contains 15
subdirectories. (1 link (shown above) for the postfix entry, 1 link for the entry . found within
postfix (not shown), and 15 for the entries .. within each of 15 subdirectories.)

Examining a long listing of the /var/spool/postfix directory, he concludes that he was right (there
are 15 subdirectories).

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l /var/spool/postfix/

total 60
drwx------ 2 postfix root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 active
drwx------ 2 postfix root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 bounce
drwx------ 2 postfix root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 corrupt
drwx------ 2 postfix root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 defer
drwx------ 2 postfix root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 deferred
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 1 12:22 etc
drwx------ 2 postfix root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 flush
drwx------ 2 postfix root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 incoming
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 11 05:54 lib
drwx-wx--- 2 postfix postdrop 4096 Feb 24 19:41 maildrop
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 pid
drwx------ 2 postfix root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 private
drwx--x--- 2 postfix postdrop 4096 Feb 24 19:41 public
drwx------ 2 postfix root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 saved
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Feb 24 19:41 usr

Questions
Use the output from the following two commands to answer the next 3 questions.

[student@station student]$ tree /etc/sysconfig/networking/

/etc/sysconfig/networking/
|-- devices
| ‘-- ifcfg-eth0
|-- ifcfg-lo
‘-- profiles
|-- default
| |-- hosts
| |-- ifcfg-eth0
| |-- network
| ‘-- resolv.conf
‘-- netup
|-- hosts
|-- ifcfg-eth0
|-- network
‘-- resolv.conf

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 42
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

4 directories, 10 files
[student@station student]$ ls -iaR /etc/sysconfig/networking/
/etc/sysconfig/networking/:
49180 . 244801 .. 65497 devices 49019 ifcfg-lo 65498 profiles

/etc/sysconfig/networking/devices:
65497 . 49180 .. 73383 ifcfg-eth0

/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles:
65498 . 49180 .. 65499 default 558071 netup

/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default:
65499 . 73386 hosts 73384 network
65498 .. 73383 ifcfg-eth0 73385 resolv.conf

/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/netup:
558071 . 558076 hosts 558072 network
65498 .. 558077 ifcfg-eth0 558075 resolv.conf

1. What would you expect to be the link count of inode number 65498?
( ) a. 2
( ) b. 3
( ) c. 4
( ) d. 5
( ) e. None of the above

2. What would you expect to be the link count of inode number 49180?
( ) a. 2
( ) b. 3
( ) c. 4
( ) d. 5
( ) e. None of the above

3. What would you expect to be the link count of inode number 65499?
( ) a. 2
( ) b. 3
( ) c. 4
( ) d. 5
( ) e. None of the above

Use the output from the following command to answer the next 4 questions.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 43
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation of U.S.
and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print format without
prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-
free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

[elvis@station 030_section_questions]$ ls -l /dev/tty[1-6] /dev/fd0 /dev/audio

crw--w---- 1 elvis tty 4, 1 Jul 22 15:30 /dev/tty1
crw--w---- 1 prince tty 4, 2 Jul 22 15:30 /dev/tty2
crw--w---- 1 elvis tty 4, 3 Jul 22 15:30 /dev/tty3
crw--w---- 1 blondie tty 4, 4 Jul 22 15:30 /dev/tty4
crw------- 1 root root 4, 5 Jul 22 09:29 /dev/tty5
crw------- 1 root root 4, 6 Jul 22 09:29 /dev/tty6
brw-rw---- 1 prince floppy 2, 0 Jan 30 05:24 /dev/fd0
crw------- 1 prince root 14, 4 Jan 30 05:24 /dev/audio

4. The user elvis is logged in to which virtual console(s)?

[ ] a. Virtual Console Number 1
[ ] b. Virtual Console Number 2
[ ] c. Virtual Console Number 3
[ ] d. Virtual Console Number 4
[ ] e. Virtual Console Number 5
[ ] f. Virtual Console Number 6

5. Which of the following are block device nodes?

[ ] a. /dev/tty1
[ ] b. /dev/tty2
[ ] c. /dev/tty3
[ ] d. /dev/tty6
[ ] e. /dev/fd0
[ ] f. /dev/audio

6. Which user is currently considered the "Console User"?

( ) a. elvis
( ) b. prince
( ) c. blondie
( ) d. None of the above
( ) e. It cannot be determined from the information provided.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 44
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a
violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in
electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 3. Directories and Device Nodes

7. The user elvis has also logged on using the X graphical environment. He tries to play an audio CD using the
gnome-cd player. Which of the following best explains why this will not work?
( ) a. Only users who have logged on using a virtual console may access the audio devices.
( ) b. The user elvis is not considered the "Console User", and does not have write permissions to the device
nodes that connect to the audio device drivers.
( ) c. The user elvis is not a member of the group "audio", and does not have write permissions to the device
nodes that connect to the audio device drivers.
( ) d. None of the above

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 45
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

Key Concepts
• Linux allows low level access to disk drives through device nodes in the /dev directory.
• Usually, disks are formatted with a filesystem, and mounted to a directory instead.
• Filesystems are created with some variant of the mkfs command.
• The default filesystem of Red Hat Enterprise Linux is the ext3 filesystem.
• The mount command is used to map the root directory of a disk’s (or a disk partition’s) filesystem to
an already existing directory. That directory is then referred to as a mount point.
• The umount command is used to unmount a filesystem from a mount point.
• The df command is used to report filesystem usage, and tables currently mounted devices.

Discussion

Disk Devices
Linux (and Unix) allows users direct, low level access to disk drives through device nodes in the /dev
directory. The following table lists the filenames of common disk device nodes, and the disks with which
they are associated.

Table 4-1. Linux Disk Device Nodes

Device Node Disk

/dev/fd0 Floppy Disk
/dev/hda IDE Primary Master
/dev/hdb IDE Primary Slave
/dev/hdc IDE Secondary Master
/dev/hdd IDE Secondary Slave
/dev/sd[a-z] SCSI Disks
/dev/cdrom Symbolic Link to CD/ROM

Although device nodes exist for disk drives, usually standard users do not have permissions to access
them directly. In the following, elvis has performed a long listing of the various device nodes tabled
above.

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l /dev/fd0 /dev/hd[abcd] /dev/sda /dev/cdrom

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 8 Oct 1 2002 /dev/cdrom -> /dev/hdc
brw-rw---- 1 elvis floppy 2, 0 Jan 30 05:24 /dev/fd0
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 0 Jan 30 05:24 /dev/hda

46
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

brw-rw---- 1 root disk 3, 64 Jan 30 05:24 /dev/hdb

brw------- 1 elvis disk 22, 0 Jan 30 05:24 /dev/hdc
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 22, 64 Jan 30 05:24 /dev/hdd
brw-rw---- 1 root disk 8, 0 Jan 30 05:24 /dev/sda

By default, elvis does not have permissions to access the machine’s fixed drives. Because he is
(apparently) logged on at the console, he is considered the "console user", and has gained permissions to
access the floppy and CD/ROM drives. We will take advantage of this fact during this lesson.
Interestingly, the file /dev/cdrom is not a device node, but a symbolic link, which resolves to the block
device node /dev/hdc. Most modern CD/ROM drives physically attach to the machine using either an
IDE or SCSI interface, and so appear to the kernel as just another SCSI or IDE drive. Some applications,
however, such as the gnome-cd audio CD player, want to access "the CD/ROM". For them,
/dev/cdrom provides access to the CD/ROM, no matter how its attached to the system.
More often than not, hard disks are further divided into partitions. Partitions are regions of the hard disk
that can each be used as if it were a separate disk. Just as there are device nodes for every disk, there are
also device nodes for every disk partition. The name of a partition’s device node is simply the partition
number appended to the name of the disk’s device node. For example, the device node for the third
partition of the primary slave IDE drive is called /dev/hdb3.
The following diagram illustrates a hard disk that has been divided into four partitions, and the device
nodes which address each of the partitions.

Figure 4-1. Hard Disk Partitions

Primary Master IDE Drive: hda

hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4

Low Level Access to Drives

In the following, elvis is exploring low level access to his floppy drive. He starts by ensuring he has read
and write permissions to the floppy’s device node, catting the /etc/resolv.conf file, and then
redirecting the output of the command to the floppy drive (/dev/fd0).

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l /dev/fd0

brw-rw---- 1 elvis floppy 2, 0 Jan 30 05:24 /dev/fd0
[elvis@station elvis]$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
search example.com
nameserver 192.168.0.254
[elvis@station elvis]$ cat /etc/resolv.conf > /dev/fd0
-bash: /dev/fd0: No such device or address

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 47
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

At first perplexed by the error message, elvis realizes that there is no floppy disk in his floppy disk drive.
He places an old, unused floppy (that he doesn’t care about the contents of) into the drive.

[elvis@station elvis]$ cat /etc/resolv.conf > /dev/fd0

-bash: /dev/fd0: Read-only file system

Perplexed again, elvis removes the floppy from the drive, examines it, slides the write protection tab on
the floppy disk to the writable position, and reinserts the floppy.

[elvis@station elvis]$ cat /etc/resolv.conf > /dev/fd0

Finally, the floppy drive’s light comes on, and elvis hears the disk spin as information is written to the
floppy. Curious to see what he has written to the floppy disk, elvis next tries to read the floppy with the
less pager.

[elvis@station elvis]$ less /dev/fd0

/dev/fd0 is not a regular file (use -f to see it)

The less pager seems to be telling elvis, "Sane people don’t read from device nodes directly, but if you
really want to do it, I’ll let you." Because elvis really wants to do it, he adds the -f command line switch.

[elvis@station elvis]$ less -f /dev/fd0

On the first page of the pager, elvis recognizes the first few characters as the contents of
/etc/resolv.conf. After that, however, the pager shows unintelligible data, with occasional human
readable text interspersed.

search example.com
nameserver 192.168.0.254
B^RA^^@^@V^^|F^@^@^@AdDBP^A^^|^C^F^B|^@DVP|Q^^^R ABAoot failed^@^@^@LDLINUX SYS
...

The user elvis continues to page through the "file" using the less pager, seeing apparently random
snippets of text and binary characters. When he feels like he’s gotten the point, he quits the pager.
What is the point? By accessing disk drives through their device nodes, users may see (and write) the
contents of the drive byte for byte. To the user, the drive looks like a (very big) file. When elvis cats the
contents of a file to the drive’s device node, the information is transferred, byte for byte, to the drive.
On the first few bytes of the floppy, elvis sees a copy of the contents of the /etc/resolv.conf file. On
the floppy, what is the filename associated with the information? Trick question. It doesn’t have one.
Who is the user owner? What are the permissions? There are none. It’s just data. When elvis goes back
to read the contents of the drive, he sees the data he wrote there, namely the contents of the
/etc/resolv.conf file. After that, he sees whatever happened to be on the floppy before he started.

Filesystems
The previous section demonstrated how to access drives at a low level. Obviously, people do not like to
store their information on drives as one stream of data. They like to store their information in files, and
give the files filenames. They like to organize their files into directories, and say who can access the

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 48
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

directory and who cannot. All of this structuring of information is the responsibility of what is called a
filesystem.
A filesystem provides order to disk drives by organizing the drive into fixed sized chunks called blocks.
The filesystem then organizes these blocks, effectively saying "this block is going to contain only
inodes", "this block is going to contain only dentries", "these 3 block over here, and that one over there,
are going to contain the contents of the file /etc/services", or "this first block is going to store
information which keeps track of what all the other blocks are being used for". Filesystems provide all of
this structure that is usually taken for granted.
Before a disk can be used to store files in a conventional sense, it must be initialized with this type of low
level structure. In Linux, this is usually referred to as "creating a filesystem". In other operating systems,
it is usually referred to as "formatting the disk". Linux supports a large number of different types of
filesystems (the fs(5) man page lists just a few). While Linux’s native filesystem is the ext2 (or in Red
Hat Enterprise Linux, the ext3) filesystem, it also supports the native filesystems of many other operating
systems, such as the DOS FAT filesystem, or the OS/2 High Performance File System.
In Linux, filesystems are created with some variant of the mkfs command. Because these commands are
usually used only by the administrative user, they do not live in the standard /bin or /usr/bin
directories, and therefore cannot be invoked as simple commands. Instead, they live in the /sbin
directory, which is reserved for administrative commands. In the following, elvis lists all commands that
begin mkfs in the /sbin directory.

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls /sbin/mkfs*

/sbin/mkfs /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /sbin/mkfs.msdos
/sbin/mkfs.cramfs /sbin/mkfs.ext3 /sbin/mkfs.vfat

Apparently, there is one copy of the mkfs command for each type of filesystem that can be constructed,
including the ext2 and msdos filesystems. The user elvis next formats the same floppy he used above
with the ext2 filesystem. Because the mkfs.ext2 command did not live in one of the "standard"
directories, elvis needs to refer to the command using an absolute reference, /sbin/mkfs.ext2.

[elvis@station elvis]$ /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0

mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=4096 (log=2)
Fragment size=4096 (log=2)
4096 inodes, 4096 blocks
204 blocks (4.98%) reserved for the super user
First data block=0
1 block group
32768 blocks per group, 32768 fragments per group
4096 inodes per group

Writing inode tables: done

Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 20 mounts or

180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 49
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

The mkfs.ext2 command displays information about the filesystem as it creates it on the device
/dev/fd0. When the command completes, the filesystem has been initialized, and the floppy is ready to
be used.
The mkfs command, and its variants, can be configured with a large collection of command line
switches which specify low level details about the filesystem. These details are beyond the scope of this
course, however. Fortunately, the various options default to very reasonable general purpose defaults. For
the curious, more information can be found in the mkfs.ext2(8) and similar man pages.

Mounting Filesystems
Once a disk or a disk partition has been formatted with a filesystem, users need some way to access the
directories and files that the filesystem provides. In other operating systems, users are usually very aware
of disk partitions, because they have to refer to them using labels such as C: or D:. In Unix, users are
often unaware of partitions, because different disk partitions are organized into a single directory
structure.
How is this done? Every filesystem provides a root directory that serves as the base of that filesystem.
Upon booting the system, one of your disk’s partitions acts as the root partition, and its root directory
becomes the system’s root directory /. Sometimes, that’s the end of the story. The / directory has
subdirectories, and those subdirectories have subdirectories, all of which reside in the root partition’s
filesystem.
If a system has multiple disks, however, or if a disk has multiple partitions, the story gets more
complicated. In order to access the filesystems on the other partitions, the root directories of those
filesystems are mapped to an already existing directory through a standard Unix technique called
mounting.
In the example diagrammed below, the filesystem on the partition /dev/hda2 is being used as the root
partition, and contains the /etc, /tmp, /home, and other expected directories. The /dev/hda4 partition
has also been formatted with a filesystem, and its root directory contains the directories /blondie,
/prince, and others. In order to make use of this filesystem, it is mounted to the /home directory, which
already existed in the root partition’s filesystem. This mount usually happens as a normal part of the
system’s boot up process.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 50
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

Figure 4-2. Mounting a Filesystem

hda2

/ hda4

/etc
/
/etc/sysconfig
/blondie
/home
/elvis
/tmp
/madonna
/usr
/prince
/var

Now, all references to the /home directory are transparently mapped to the root directory of the
filesystem on /dev/hda4, giving the appearance that the /home directory contains the subdirectories
blondie, elvis, etc., as seen below. When a filesystem is mounted over a directory in this manner, that
directory is referred to as a mount point.

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls /home

blondie elvis madonna prince

How can elvis tell which partition contains a given file? Just using the ls command, he can’t! To the ls
command, and usually in a user’s mind, all of the different partitions are gracefully combined into a
single, seamless directory structure.

Viewing Mount Points

How can a user determine which directories are being used as mount points? One approach is to run the
mount command without arguments.

[elvis@station elvis]$ mount

/dev/hda3 on / type ext3 (rw)
none on /proc type proc (rw)
usbdevfs on /proc/bus/usb type usbdevfs (rw)
/dev/hda1 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)

Without arguments, the mount command returns a list of current mount points, the device that is
mounted to it, the type of filesystem that device has been formatted with, and any mount options
associated with the mount. In the above example, the /dev/hda3 partition is being used as the root
partition, and the ext3 filesystem on partition /dev/hda1 has been mounted to the directory /boot.
Note that several of the filesystems listed above are said to be on the device "none". These are virtual
filesystems, which are implemented by the kernel directly, and do not exist on any physical device.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 51
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

Why Bother?
If you seldom know which directories are being used as mount points, and which files exist in which
partitions, why bother even talking about it? For now, we will address two reasons. The first reason is
that there can be subtle issues that creep up which are related to the underlying filesystem. Partitions can
run out of space. If a filesystem mounted on /home runs out of space, no more files can be created
underneath the /home directory. This has no effect on the /tmp directory, however, because it belongs to
another filesystem. In Unix, when a partition fills up, it only effects the part of the directory structure
underneath its mount point, not the entire directory tree.
Users can determine how much space is available on a partition with the df command, which stands for
"disk free".

df [OPTION...] [FILE...]

Show information about all partitions, or partition on which FILE resides.

Switch Effect
-a, --all Show all filesystems, including those of size 0
-h, --human-readable Print sizes in human readable format
-i, --inodes List inode usage instead of block usage
-T, --print-type Include filesystem type

Not only will the df command show how much space is left on particular partitions, but it also gives a
very readable table of which devices are mounted to which directories. In the following, the filesystem
on /dev/hda2 is being used as the root partition, the filesystem on /dev/hda1 is mounted to the /boot
directory, and /dev/hda4 is mounted to /home. A partition on a second disk drive, namely the
/dev/hdb2 partition, is mounted to a non standard directory named /data.

[elvis@station elvis]$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 8259708 6708536 1131592 86% /
/dev/hda1 102454 24227 72937 25% /boot
/dev/hda4 5491668 348768 4863936 7% /home
/dev/hdb2 4226564 1417112 2594748 36% /data
none 127592 0 127592 0% /dev/shm

Mounting Temporary Media: The /media directory.

The second reason users need to be aware of filesystems and mount points involves temporary media
such as floppies and CD/ROM drives. Like any block device, floppy disks and CD/ROM disks are
formatted with filesystems. In order to access these filesystems, they must be mounted into the directory
structure, using a (already existing) directory as a mount point. Which directory should be used?
The /media directory contains subdirectories such as /media/floppy and /media/cdrom, or even
/media/camera, which are intended for just this purpose; they serve as mount points for temporary
media. (Thus the name of the /media directory.) If you would like to make use of a temporary disk, such
as a floppy disk, you must first mount the filesystem into your directory structure, using the mount
command.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 52
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

[elvis@station elvis]$ mount /media/floppy

[elvis@station elvis]$ df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda2 8259708 6708536 1131592 86% /
/dev/hda1 102454 24227 72937 25% /boot
/dev/hda4 5491668 348768 4863936 7% /home
/dev/hdb2 4226564 1417112 2594748 36% /data
none 127592 0 127592 0% /dev/shm
/dev/fd0 1412 13 1327 1% /media/floppy

On the last line, the df command now reports the newly mounted floppy drive, and elvis can copy files
onto the floppy.

Figure 4-3. Mounting a Formatted Floppy

[elvis@station elvis]$ cp /etc/services /media/floppy/

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls /media/floppy/
lost+found services

Where did the directory lost+found come from? This directory was created when the filesystem was
created, and always exists in the root directory of an ext2 or ext3 filesystem. It is used occasionally when
repairing damaged filesystems.
When elvis has finished using the floppy, he detaches it from the filesystem using the umount command.

[elvis@station elvis]$ umount /media/floppy/

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls /media/floppy/

Once the floppy disk’s filesystem has been detached from the /media/floppy directory, the directory is
just an empty directory.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 53
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

Mounting Issues
Mounting devices is one of the more awkward and problematic issues for new Linux (and Unix) users.
The following issues can also occur, which serve to complicate the matter.

Permissions
By default, only the root user can mount and unmount devices. Temporary media are handled
differently, however. The "Console User" (someone who has logged in from a virtual console or the
X login screen) gains ownership of devices associated with the physical machine, such as a floppy
drive, and special permissions to mount these devices to predefined mount points, such as
/media/floppy. If a user has logged in by some other technique, such as over the network, or via
the su command, they will not be considered the "Console User", and will not have permissions to
mount these devices.

Busy Filesystems
A filesystem can only be unmounted if it is considered "non-busy". What can keep a filesystem
"busy"? Any open file, or any process that has a current working directory in the filesystem, "busy"s
the filesystem. The only way for the filesystem to be unmounted is to track down any processes that
might be keeping the filesystem "busy", and kill them.

Automounters
The GNOME graphical environment runs an automounter, which keeps an eye on the CD/ROM
drive, and will automatically mount the filesystem of any newly inserted disk. The automounter is
part of the graphical environment, and does not exist if a user logged in through a virtual console.
Also, the automounter only works for the CD/ROM drive. The floppy drive, or other devices, must
be mounted "manually".

Kernel Buffering
In order to improve performance, the kernel buffers all block device (harddrive) interactions. For
example, when you copy a file to a floppy, the file might seem to have been copied almost
immediately. Later, when you unmount the floppy with the umount command, the command takes
a while to return while writes are being committed to the floppy. When unmounting the device, the
kernel is forced to commit all pending transactions to the disk.
What would happen if you removed the floppy from the drive before buffered writes were
committed to disk? At best, the files that you thought you had copied to the floppy would not be
there. At worst, you may have a corrupted floppy, and a confused Linux kernel the next time
someone tries to mount a floppy.
The upshot: Not only must you mount temporary media (such as floppies) before you can use them,
you must also unmount the media when you are done.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 54
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

Examples

Using an Unformatted Floppy

The user madonna has a collection of songs which she would like to copy to an unformatted floppy to
share with friends. Because she knows that all of her friends use Red Hat Enterprise Linux, she decides
to format the floppy with the ext2 filesystem.

[madonna@station madonna]$ /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0

mke2fs 1.32 (09-Nov-2002)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
Block size=1024 (log=0)
Fragment size=1024 (log=0)
184 inodes, 1440 blocks
72 blocks (5.00%) reserved for the super user
First data block=1
1 block group
8192 blocks per group, 8192 fragments per group
184 inodes per group

Writing inode tables: done

Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

This filesystem will be automatically checked every 21 mounts or

180 days, whichever comes first. Use tune2fs -c or -i to override.

Next, she mounts the floppy, and copies her files over to it.

[madonna@station madonna]$ mount /media/floppy/

[madonna@station madonna]$ cp song* /media/floppy/
[madonna@station madonna]$ cd /media/floppy/
[madonna@station floppy]$ ls
lost+found song02.ogg song04.ogg song06.ogg
song01.ogg song03.ogg song05.ogg song07.ogg

She then unmounts her floppy.

[madonna@station madonna]$ umount /media/floppy/

umount: /media/floppy: device is busy

Why would the floppy not unmount? Some process either has an open file, or a current working directory
within the floppy’s filesystem. The offending process is madonna’s bash shell, whose current working
directory is /media/floppy. In order to unmount the floppy, madonna must cd to somewhere else, such
as her home directory.

[madonna@station floppy]$ cd
[madonna@station madonna]$ umount /media/floppy/

She can now remove the floppy from the drive.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 55
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

Using a DOS Formatted Floppy

Eventually, madonna comes across a friend that insists he can only use DOS formatted floppies.
Madonna formats another floppy, this time with the MS-DOS filesystem, mounts the floppy, and copies
her files over to it.

[madonna@station madonna]$ /sbin/mkfs.msdos /dev/fd0

mkfs.msdos 2.8 (28 Feb 2001)
[madonna@station madonna]$ mount /media/floppy/
[madonna@station madonna]$ cp song0* /media/floppy/

After she has copied the files to the floppy, she decides that she would like to create a soft link to identify
her favorite song for her friend.

[madonna@station madonna]$ cd /media/floppy/

[madonna@station floppy]$ ls
song01.ogg song03.ogg song05.ogg song07.ogg
song02.ogg song04.ogg song06.ogg
[madonna@station floppy]$ ln -s song06.ogg my_favorite_song.ogg
ln: creating symbolic link ‘my_favorite_song.ogg’ to ‘song06.ogg’: Operation not
permitted

Why could madonna not create the link? Although Linux supports the MS-DOS filesystem, the MS-DOS
filesystem is much simpler than traditional Linux filesystems, and Linux needs to make some
compromises. One of these compromises is that the MS-DOS filesystem does not support soft (or hard)
links. Neither does the MS-DOS filesystem support file owners and file permissions. How does Linux
handle this? It treats all files as owned by the same user, and all permissions as 755. What happens when
madonna tries to change permissions on one of the files?

[madonna@station floppy]$ chmod 664 song05.ogg

chmod: changing permissions of ‘song05.ogg’ (requested: 0664, actual: 0644): Ope
ration not permitted

Again, the operation not permitted. Different filesystems provide different capabilities, and the MS-DOS
filesystem is not as featured as the ext2 filesystem.
Now that she is finished, madonna cd’s to her home directory, and unmounts the floppy.

[madonna@station floppy]$ cd
[madonna@station madonna]$ umount /media/floppy/

Why did she cd to her home directory first?

Floppy Images
Several friends have asked madonna for copies of the same floppy. After a while, she grows tired of
formatting floppies, mounting them, copying the same 8 songs over to it, and unmounting. She decides to
speed up the process by creating an image file for her floppy.
She first prepares a floppy with the files that she wants to distribute.

[madonna@station madonna]$ /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0 > /dev/null

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 56
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

mke2fs 1.32 (09-Nov-2002)

[madonna@station madonna]$ mount /media/floppy/
[madonna@station madonna]$ cp song* /media/floppy/
[madonna@station madonna]$ ls /media/floppy/
lost+found song02.ogg song04.ogg song06.ogg
song01.ogg song03.ogg song05.ogg song07.ogg
[madonna@station madonna]$ umount /media/floppy/

Next, she copies the contents of the unmounted floppy, byte for byte, into a file called songs.img.

[madonna@station madonna]$ cat /dev/fd0 > songs.img

The cat command, that we have been using on to view simple text files, works just as well on binary
files, or, in this case, binary disk data. After a few seconds of the floppy drive spinning, she has a new
file. How big is the file?

[madonna@station madonna]$ ls -s songs.img

1444 songs.img

1.4 MBytes, exactly what you would expect from a floppy. She stores this image file, and whenever
someone new wants a copy of her floppy, she reverses the process by cating the image back down to an
unformatted floppy.

[madonna@station madonna]$ cat songs.img > /dev/fd0

Because the image file is transferred, byte for byte, to the new floppy, this command has the effect of
formatting the floppy with an ext2 filesystem, and copying the files to it, all in one step. This is a
powerful technique known as imaging drives, and works on any type of disk, not just floppies.
When accessing devices at a low level, it is important that the device is unmounted. If madonna had
performed to last command on a mounted floppy, the kernel would have almost certainly been confused,
and corrupted the floppy.

Online Exercises

Using Floppies

Lab Exercise
Objective: Format, mount, and umount a floppy drive
Estimated Time: 15 mins.

Setup
You will need a floppy for this exercise. The contents of the floppy will be destroyed.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 57
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

Specification
In this lab exercise, you will format a floppy disk, mount it, copy files to it, and then unmount the floppy.

1. Make sure that the floppy disk is not write protected, and place it in the floppy drive.
2. Format the floppy with the ext2 filesystem, using the /sbin/mkfs.ext2 command.
3. Mount the floppy onto the /media/floppy directory, using the mount command.
4. Recursively copy the contents of the /etc/sysconfig directory onto your floppy. (Ignore any
errors that you do not have permissions to read some files.)
5. Unmount your floppy. Swap floppies with a neighbor at this point, if possible.
6. Mount your neighbor’s floppy (or remount your own), again to the /media/floppy directory.
7. With the floppy still mounted, capture the output of the df command into the file df.floppy in your
home directory.

Deliverables

1. A floppy formatted with the ext2 filesystem mounted to the /media/floppy directory.
2. A directory /media/floppy/sysconfig, which is a recursive copy of the /etc/sysconfig directory
(perhaps with a few inaccessible files omitted).
3. A file in your home directory called df.floppy, which contains the output of the df command.

Possible Solution
The following sequence of commands provides one possible solution to this exercise.

[student@station student]$ /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0

mke2fs 1.32 (09-Nov-2002)
Filesystem label=
OS type: Linux
...
[student@station student]$ mount /media/floppy/
[student@station student]$ cp -r /etc/sysconfig /media/floppy/
cp: cannot open ‘/etc/sysconfig/rhn/up2date’ for reading: Permission denied
cp: cannot open ‘/etc/sysconfig/rhn/systemid’ for reading: Permission denied
...
[student@station student]$ df > df.floppy
[student@station student]$ umount /media/floppy/

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 58
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

Cleaning Up
You may unmount your floppy after you have been graded. If you are proceeding to the next exercise,
save the contents of your floppy.

Imaging a Floppy

Lab Exercise
Objective: Create an image of a floppy disk drive
Estimated Time: 15 mins.

Setup
You will need the floppy you created in the previous exercise, namely, an ext2 formatted floppy
containing a recursive copy of the /etc/sysconfig directory.

Specification
In this lab exercise, you will create an image file of a floppy, and then restore the floppy using the image
file.

1. Make sure that the floppy disk is not write protected, and place it in the floppy drive. Make sure that
the floppy is not mounted. Unmount the floppy with the umount command, if necessary.
2. Using the cat command, make an image file of the floppy in your home directory, called
floppy.img.

3. Using the ls -s command, confirm that the size of your image file is 1444 Kbytes.
4. Using the file command, make sure the file is being identified as an ext2 filesystem.
5. With your floppy still in the drive, and still unmounted, reformat the floppy with the msdos
filesystem (using the /sbin/mkfs.msdos command).
6. Mount your floppy to the /media/floppy directory, and, using the mount command without
arguments, confirm that the floppy has been formatted with the msdos (vfat) filesystem.
7. Unmount the floppy. Using the cat command, restore your floppy from the image file.
8. Mount your floppy, again to the /media/floppy directory. Using the mount command, without
arguments, confirm that the original ext2 filesystem has been restored.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 59
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

Deliverables

1. A floppy formatted with the ext2 filesystem mounted to the /media/floppy directory.
2. An image of the same floppy, stored in the file floppy.img in your home directory.

Possible Solution
The following commands provide one solution to the first four steps of this exercise.

[student@station student]$ cat /dev/fd0 > floppy.img

[student@station student]$ file floppy.img
floppy.img: Linux rev 1.0 ext2 filesystem data
[student@station student]$ ls -s
total 1448
4 df.floppy 1444 floppy.img

Cleaning Up
Because the image file you created from this exercise is fairly large, you may want to remove it after
your exercise has been graded.

Questions
Some questions may use the following information:

[student@station student]$ mount

/dev/hda9 on / type ext3 (rw)
proc on /proc type proc (rw)
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,gid=5,mode=620)
/dev/hda2 on /boot type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hda7 on /home type ext3 (rw)
none on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
/dev/hda8 on /tmp type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hda5 on /usr type ext3 (rw)
/dev/hda6 on /var type ext3 (rw)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw)
none on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw)
sunrpc on /var/lib/nfs/rpc_pipefs type rpc_pipefs (rw)

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 60
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

1. Which command or commands will show what filesystems are currently mounted?
[ ] a. chown
[ ] b. df
[ ] c. mount
[ ] d. ls
[ ] e. mkdir

2. According to the screen output above, which device contains the /home filesystem?
( ) a. /dev/pts
( ) b. /dev/hda1
( ) c. /dev/hda5
( ) d. /dev/hda7
( ) e. None of the above

3. According to the screen output above, where is the device /dev/hda6 mounted?
( ) a. /dev/pts
( ) b. /home
( ) c. /var
( ) d. /usr
( ) e. None of the above

4. When unmounting a device, the error message "umount: /media/floppy: device is busy" can mean what?
[ ] a. An application was started from the directory /media/floppy and is still running.
[ ] b. The current working directory for some shell is /media/floppy
[ ] c. The floppy is read only.
[ ] d. You do not have permission to use the umount command.
[ ] e. An application has the file /media/floppy/make.log open for writing.

5. Why is it important to unmount removable media before physically removing it?

[ ] a. If you do not, the system will shut down.
[ ] b. So that the next disk inserted can be read and mounted without error.
[ ] c. So that the disk can be read and mounted on another system without error.
[ ] d. Most systems cache data written to a device. The umount ensures that this data gets written from the
cache to the device so that it is not lost.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 61
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

6. Which of the following commands can be used to format an unformatted floppy?

[ ] a. /sbin/mkfs.ext2
[ ] b. /sbin/mkfsys.msdos
[ ] c. format
[ ] d. floppyfd
[ ] e. mount

The user elvis tries to unmount the floppy, and receives the following error message.

[elvis@station elvis]$ umount /media/floppy/

umount: only student can unmount /dev/fd0 from /media/floppy

7. What is the most reasonable explanation for the message?

( ) a. The user student write protected the floppy.
( ) b. The user student mounted the floppy, and therefore only that user may umount the floppy.
( ) c. The user elvis does not have permissions to run the umount command.
( ) d. The user student formatted the floppy, so only the user student may mount and unmount it.

8. Which of the following commands would create an ext2 filesystem on the third partition of the primary master
IDE drive?
( ) a. /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/hda
( ) b. /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/fd0
( ) c. /sbin/mkfs.msdos /dev/hda
( ) d. /sbin/mkfs.msdos /dev/hda3
( ) e. None of the above

9. Which of the following commands would create an ext2 filesystem on the second partition of a SCSI disk?
( ) a. /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/sda2
( ) b. /sbin/mkfs.ext2 /dev/hda2
( ) c. /sbin/mkfs.msdos /dev/sda2
( ) d. /sbin/mkfs.msdos /dev/hda2
( ) e. None of the above

When logged into the X graphical environment, using GNOME, elvis tries to mount a newly inserted CD/ROM.

[elvis@station elvis]$ mount /media/cdrom

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 62
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation of U.S.
and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print format without
prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-
free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 4. Disks, Filesystems, and Mounting

mount: according to mtab, /dev/cdrom is already mounted on /media/cdrom

mount failed

10. What is the most reasonable explanation for the message?

( ) a. Another user, logged in over the network, mounted the CD/ROM without elvis realizing it.
( ) b. The GNOME automounter automatically mounted the CD/ROM.
( ) c. The /etc/mtab file is out of sync, and the CD/ROM is really not currently mounted.
( ) d. None of the above.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 63
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

Key Concepts
• The locate command uses a database to quickly locate files on the system by filename.
• The find command performs a real time, recursive search of the filesystem.
• The find command can search for files based on inode information.
• The find command can perform arbitrary commands on files.

Discussion

Locating Files
It is common to find config files in /etc or executables in a bin directory, however, sometimes it is
necessary to search the system for a specific file. Two of the common tools for this are locate and find.
The command locate prints the names of files and directories that match a supplied pattern. It is the
faster of the two commands because it relies on a database (updated daily by default) instead of
searching real time. The downside of this is that it will not find files created today or it will find files that
have been deleted since the last update of the database.
The command find can find files by name but can also search for files by owner, group, type,
modification date, and many other criteria. With its real time search through the directory tree, it is
slower than locate but it is also more flexible.

Using Locate
The locate command quickly reports all files on the disk whose filename contains the specified text. The
search relies on a database, which is updated nightly, so recently created files will probably not be
reported. The database does remember file permissions, however, so you will only see files which you
would normally have permissions to see.
Earlier we used the command umount to unlink a filesystem from the directory tree. Lets see what files
on the system include the string "umount" in their names.

[blondie@station blondie]$ locate umount

/bin/umount
/sbin/umount.cifs
/sbin/umount.nfs
/sbin/umount.nfs4
/usr/bin/gnome-umount
/usr/share/doc/samba-3.0.23c/htmldocs/manpages/smbumount.8.html
/usr/share/doc/samba-3.0.23c/htmldocs/manpages/umount.cifs.8.html

64
 Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

/usr/share/man/man2/umount.2.gz
/usr/share/man/man2/umount2.2.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/umount.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/umount.cifs.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/umount.nfs.8.gz

Notice that in addition to /bin/umount we also locate variants for special network related filesystems,
several man page files.
The locate command also supports "file globs", or, more formally, pathname expansion, using the same
*, ?, and [...] expressions as the bash shell. For example, if you knew that there was a PNG image of a
fish somewhere on the system, you might try the following locate command.
For reasons discussed in a later workbook, it’s a better idea to wrap any "globs" in quotes, though you
can often get away without them.

[blondie@station ~]$ locate "*fish*.png"

/usr/share/backgrounds/tiles/fish.png
/usr/share/gnome/help/fish/C/figures/fish_applet.png
/usr/share/gnome/help/fish/es/figures/fish_applet.png
...
/usr/share/gnome/help/fish-applet-2/de/figures/fish_applet.png
/usr/share/gnome/help/fish-applet-2/de/figures/fish_settings.png
/usr/share/gnome/help/fish-applet-2/ja/figures/fish_applet.png
...
/usr/share/gnome/panel/pixmaps/fishanim.png
/usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/apps/gnome-panel-fish.png
...

Using find
The find command is used to search the filesystem for files that meet a specified criteria. Almost any
aspect of a file can be specified, such as its name, its size, the last time it was modified, even its link
count. (The only exception is the file’s content. For that, we need to wait for a command called grep,
which complements find nicely.)
The find command’s syntax takes a little getting accustomed to, but once learned, is very usable. A find
command essentially consists of three parts: a root directory (or directories), a search criteria, and an
action.
find (root directory) (criteria) (action)
The default directory is ".", the default criteria is "every file", and the default action is "print" (the
filename), so running the find command without arguments will simply descend the current directory,
printing every filename. If given a directory name as a single argument, the same would be done for that
directory.

[madonna@station madonna]$ find /etc/sysconfig/networking/

/etc/sysconfig/networking/
/etc/sysconfig/networking/devices
/etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 65
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/network
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/resolv.conf
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/hosts
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/ifcfg-eth0
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/netup
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/netup/network
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/netup/resolv.conf
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/netup/hosts
/etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/netup/ifcfg-eth0
/etc/sysconfig/networking/ifcfg-lo

Usually, however, the find command is given criteria to refine its search, in the form of (non standard)
command line switches. For example, the -name command line switch is used to find files with a given
name. As with locate, globs are supported, but should be quoted.

[madonna@station madonna]$ find /etc -name "*.conf"

/etc/gdm/securitytokens.conf
/etc/gdm/custom.conf
/etc/gssapi_mech.conf
...
/etc/updatedb.conf
/etc/reader.conf
/etc/selinux/restorecond.conf
find: /etc/selinux/targeted/modules/active: Permission denied
find: /etc/selinux/targeted/modules/previous: Permission denied
/etc/selinux/targeted/setrans.conf
/etc/selinux/semanage.conf
...

While superficially similar to the locate command, find functions by performing a search in real time.
This can take a lot longer, but avoids the issue of an "out of sync" database. Note that if the proper
ordering is not followed, find becomes quickly confused.

[madonna@station madonna]$ find -name "*.conf" /etc

find: paths must precede expression
Usage: find [path...] [expression]

Find Criteria
If you browse the find(1) man page, you will discover that an overwhelming selection of criteria can be
specified for your search. Almost any aspect of the file that can be reported by the stat command or the ls
command is fair game. The following table summarizes some of the more common search criteria.

Table 5-1. Search Criteria for the find Command

switch specification
-empty The file is a directory or regular file, and is empty.
-group gname The file is group owned by gname.
-inum n The file has an inode number n.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation 66
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print

format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

switch specification
-links n The file has n links.
-mmin n The file was last modified n minutes ago.
-mtime n The file was last modified n days ago.
-name pattern The file’s name matches the file glob pattern.
-newer filename The file was modified more recently than filename.
-perm mode The file’s permissions are exactly mode.
-perm -mode All of the permission bits mode are set for the file.
-perm +mode Any of the permission bits mode are set for the file.
-size n The file has a size of n.
-type c The file is of type c, where c is "f" (regular file), "d" (directory), or "l" (symbolic
link). See the man page for more details.
-user uname File is owned by the user uname.

More options are available, but these should give you an idea of the flexibility of the find command. Any
criteria that takes a numeric argument, such as -size or -mtime, recognizes arguments of the form +3
(meaning more than 3), -3 (meaning less than 3), or 3 (meaning exactly 3).
If multiple criteria are specified, by default, all criteria must be met. If multiple criteria are separated by
-or, however, either condition may be met. Criteria can be inverted by preceding the criteria with -not.
As an example, the following command finds all files under /var which are not group writable.

[elvis@station elvis]$ find /var -not -perm +20

/var
/var/lib
/var/lib/rpm
/var/lib/rpm/Packages
/var/lib/rpm/Basenames
/var/lib/rpm/Name
/var/lib/rpm/Group
...

Find Actions
You can also specify what you would like done to files that meet the specified criteria. By default, if no
criteria is specified, the file name is printed to standard out, one file per line. Other options are
summarized in the following table.

Table 5-2. Action Specifications for the find Command

Switch Action
-exec command ; Execute command on matching files. Use {} to indicate where filename should be
substituted.
-ok command ; Like -exec, but prompt for each file
-ls Print file in ls -dils format.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 67
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

Again, others exist. Consult the find(1) man page.

Perhaps the most useful, and definitely the most awkward, of these is -exec, and its close cousin -ok. The
-exec mechanism is powerful: rather than printing the names of matching files, arbitrary commands can
be run. The -exec mechanism is awkward, because the syntax for specifying the command to run is
tricky. The command should be written after the -exec switch, using a literal {} as a placeholder for the
file name. The command should be terminated with a literal ;, but as will be seen a later Workbook, the ;
has special significance to the shell, and so must be "escaped" by prepending a \. An example will help
clarify the syntax.
Suppose madonna wanted to make a copy of every file greater than 200 Kbytes in size out of the /etc
directory. First, she finds which files meet the criteria.

[madonna@station madonna]$ find /etc -size +200k 2>/dev/null

/etc/selinux/targeted/policy/policy.21
/etc/firmware/microcode.dat
/etc/prelink.cache
/etc/termcap
/etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bundle.crt
/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/%[email protected]
/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults/%gconf-tree-cs.xml
...

(The 2>/dev/null serves to "throw away" complaints about directories madonna does not have
permissions to access.)
To confirm the sizes of the files, she reruns the command, specifying the "action" of -ls.

[madonna@station madonna]$ find /etc -size +200k -ls 2>/dev/null

132462 1112 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1130305 Aug 22 15:41 /etc/selinux/targeted/pol
132045 788 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 798555 Dec 4 2006 /etc/firmware/microcode.d
132705 320 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 319141 Aug 24 13:20 /etc/prelink.cache
130862 800 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 807103 Jul 12 2006 /etc/termcap
131090 440 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 441017 Nov 30 2006 /etc/pki/tls/certs/ca-bun
132279 460 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 459789 Aug 22 15:43 /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defa
132673 468 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 467812 Aug 22 15:43 /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defa
...

Now, she makes a directory called /tmp/big, and composes a cp command on the find command line,
remembering the following.

• Place a {} as a placeholder for matching file names

• Terminate the command with a \;.

[madonna@station madonna]$ mkdir /tmp/big

[madonna@station madonna]$ find /etc -size +200k -exec cp {} /tmp/big \; 2>/dev
/null
[madonna@station madonna]$ ls /tmp/big/
apps_gnome_settings_daemon_keybindings.schemas %gconf-tree-nn.xml
apps_nautilus_preferences.schemas %gconf-tree-or.xml
ca-bundle.crt %gconf-tree-pa.xml
clock.schemas %gconf-tree-pl.xml

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 68
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

...

Rather than printing the file name, the find command copied the files to the /tmp/big directory.

Examples

Using locate
There are several ways to find a specific file.

[blondie@station blondie]$ locate rmdir

/bin/rmdir
/usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi/auto/POSIX/rmdir.al
/usr/share/doc/bash-3.1/loadables/rmdir.c
/usr/share/man/man1/rmdir.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1p/rmdir.1p.gz
/usr/share/man/man2/rmdir.2.gz
/usr/share/man/man3p/rmdir.3p.gz
[blondie@station blondie]$ find /bin -name "*dir*"
/bin/mkdir
/bin/rmdir
[blondie@station blondie]$ which rmdir
/bin/rmdir

In the above examples, locate shows everything in the database with the string "rmdir" including the
command and man pages. find shows all files under /bin that include "dir" in the name. Finally, which
shows the absolute path for a known command.
You can also include filename expansion characters in your search:

[blondie@station blondie]$ locate "*theme*png"

...
/home/elvis/gdm/themes/RHEL/background.png
/home/elvis/gdm/themes/RHEL/distribution.png
/home/elvis/gdm/themes/RHEL/icon-language.png
/home/elvis/gdm/themes/RHEL/icon-reboot.png
/home/elvis/gdm/themes/RHEL/icon-session.png
/home/elvis/gdm/themes/RHEL/icon-shutdown.png
/home/elvis/gdm/themes/RHEL/logo.png
...

Recall that locate uses a database and will not locate files that have been created since the database was
last updated. The example below should not show any output from the locate command.

[blondie@station blondie]$ touch ~/locate_example_file

[blondie@station blondie]$ locate locate_example_file

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 69
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

Because the locate database does not yet know about the locate_example_file file, no files are
reported.

Using find
The find searches the actual directory tree from the specified beginning point.

[elvis@station elvis]$ find /home/elvis

/home/elvis
/home/elvis/.metacity
/home/elvis/.metacity/sessions
/home/elvis/.metacity/sessions/1187895446-1983-3849805419.ms
/home/elvis/.metacity/sessions/1187972526-2245-2949308818.ms
...

Multiple starting directories can be specified for the find command.

[elvis@station elvis]$ find /bin /usr/bin -name "*dir*"

/bin/rmdir
/bin/mkdir
/usr/bin/dir
/usr/bin/lndir
/usr/bin/dirname
...

The find command can be used to discover symbolic links.

[elvis@station ~]$ find /usr/bin -type l

/usr/bin/lastb
/usr/bin/spam
/usr/bin/gnome-character-map
/usr/bin/rdistd
/usr/bin/ipmish
/usr/bin/python2
...
[elvis@station ~]$ ls -l /usr/bin/lastb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Aug 22 15:36 /usr/bin/lastb -> last

As a complicated example, find can produce a "ls -l style" listing of everything on the system not owned
by the users root, bin or elvis. As there may be directories where search access is denied, redirecting
errors to /dev/null reduces screen clutter.

[elvis@station elvis]$ find / -not -user root -not -user bin -not -user elvis
-ls 2> /dev/null
198506 96 -rwxr-xr-x 1 rpm rpm 89344 Jan 4 2007 /bin/rpm
1013889 8 drwx------ 3 madonna madonna 4096 Aug 25 08:43 /home/madonna
1013833 8 drwx------ 3 pataki pataki 4096 Aug 22 15:43 /home/pataki
1013986 8 drwx------ 4 rhauser_a rhauser_a 4096 Aug 23 20:33 /home/rhauser_a
1013903 8 drwx------ 3 prince prince 4096 Aug 22 15:43 /home/prince
1014000 8 drwx------ 3 rhauser_c rhauser_c 4096 Aug 23 11:02 /home/rhauser_c
1013896 8 drwx------ 3 bob bob 4096 Aug 22 15:43 /home/bob
1013854 8 drwx------ 3 blondie blondie 4096 Aug 25 08:59 /home/blondie

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 70
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

1013875 8 drwx------ 3 nero nero 4096 Aug 22 15:43 /home/nero

1013882 8 drwx------ 3 einstein einstein 4096 Aug 22 15:43 /home/einstein
...

Using find to Execute Commands on Files

Find all the files under /tmp with a link count greater than 1 and make a copy of each in a directory
called /tmp/links.

[blondie@station blondie]$ ls -l /tmp/*file

-rw-rw-r-- 2 blondie blondie 0 Mar 17 22:33 /tmp/linkfile
-rw-rw-r-- 2 blondie blondie 0 Mar 17 22:33 /tmp/newfile
[blondie@station blondie]$ mkdir /tmp/links
[blondie@station blondie]$ find /tmp -type f -links +1 -exec cp {} /tmp/links \;
[blondie@station blondie]$ ls /tmp/links
linkfile
newfile

Online Exercises

Locating files

Lab Exercise
Objective: Devise and execute a find command that produces the result
described in each of the following.
Estimated Time: 20 mins.

Specification
Use the find command to find files which match the following criteria, and redirect the output to the
specified files in your home directory. When listing filenames, make sure every filename is an absolute
reference.
You will encounter a number of "Permission denied" messages when find tries to recurse into directories
for which you do not have permissions to access. Do not be concerned with these errors. You can
suppress these error messages by appending 2> /dev/nullto your find command.
You may need to consult the find(1) man page to find the answer for some of the problems.

Deliverables

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 71
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

1. The file varlib.rpm, which contains a list of all files under the /var/lib directory which are owned by the
user "rpm".
2. The file var.rootmail, which contains a list of all files under the /var directory which are owned by the user
"root" and group owned by the group "mail".
3. The file bin.big which contains a ls -dils style listing of all files under the /usr/bin directory that are greater
than 1000000 characters in size.
4. Execute the file command on every file under /etc/sysconfig, and record the output in the file
sysconfig.find.
5. The file big.links, which contains a list of the filenames of regular files underneath the /usr/lib/locale
directory which have a link count of greater than 100.

Questions

1. Which find option will locate files of exactly 100 blocks?

( ) a. -size +100
( ) b. -size 100
( ) c. -inum 100
( ) d. -inum +100

2. Which find option will locate files with inode number 100?
( ) a. -type f
( ) b. -size 100
( ) c. -inum 100
( ) d. -perm 100

3. Which find option or options will locate only ordinary files which have a link count of 2 or more?
( ) a. -type f -links +2
( ) b. -links +1
( ) c. -type o -links +1
( ) d. -type f -links +1

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 72
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

4. Which find option will print the output in a ls -l style format?

( ) a. -type
( ) b. -size
( ) c. -inum
( ) d. -ls

5. Which find option or options will locate files owned by user root and group sys?
[ ] a. -user root -and -group sys
[ ] b. -user root -group sys
[ ] c. -user root
[ ] d. -group sys

6. Which command or commands will list files that were recently created and include the string "coffee" in their
names?
[ ] a. slocate coffee
[ ] b. find . -name coffee
[ ] c. find . -name "*coffee*"
[ ] d. ls -R *coffee*

7. Which command or commands will list files that include the string "coffee" in their names?
[ ] a. slocate coffee
[ ] b. find . -name coffee
[ ] c. find . -name "*coffee*"
[ ] d. ls -R *coffee*

8. Which find command will locate ordinary files under /home or /tmp with world writable permissions?
( ) a. find /home /tmp -type f -perm -2
( ) b. find /home -or /tmp -type f -perm 002
( ) c. find /home /tmp -type o -perm 2
( ) d. find /home /tmp -perm -2

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 73
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 5. Locating Files with locate and find

9. Which find option can be added to the previous answer so that each file found will have the "other" write
permission removed?
( ) a. -exec chmod o-w \;
( ) b. -exec chmod o-w
( ) c. -exec chmod o-w {} \;
( ) d. -exec chmod -2

10. Which find option can be used such that each file found will have permissions removed and have find prompt
interactively whether or not to change the permissions?
( ) a. -ok
( ) b. -ask
( ) c. -exec
( ) d. -exec -ok

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 74
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
Chapter 6. Compressing Files: gzip and bzip2

Key Concepts
• Compressing seldom used files saves disk space.
• The most commonly used compression command is gzip.
• The bzip2 command is newer, and provides the most efficient compression.

Discussion

Why Compress Files?

Files that are not used very often are often compressed. Large files are also compressed before
transferring to other systems or users. The advantages of saved space and bandwidth usually outweighs
the added time it takes to compress and uncompress files.
Text files often have patterns that can be compressed up to 75% but binary files rarely compress more
than 25%. In fact, it is even possible for a compressed binary file to be larger than the original file!

Standard Linux Compression Utilities

As better and better compression techniques have been developed, new compression utilities have gained
favor. For backwards compatibility, however, older compression utilities are still retained. Often, there is
a trade off between compression efficiency and CPU activity. Sometimes, older compression utilities do
"good enough" in a much shorter time.
The following list discusses the two most common compression utilities used in Linux and Unix.

gzip (.gz)
The gzip command is the most versatile and most commonly used decompression utility. Files
compressed with gzip are uncompressed with gunzip. Additionally, the gzip command supports the
following command line switches.

Switch Effect
-c Redirect Output to stdout
-d Decompress instead of compress file
-r Recurse through subdirectories, compressing individual files.
-1 ... -9 Specify trade off between CPU intensity and compression efficiency.

75
 Chapter 6. Compressing Files: gzip and bzip2

bzip2 (.bz)
The bzip2 command is a relative newcomer, which tends to produce the most compact compressed
files, but is the most CPU intensive. Files compressed with bzip2 are uncompressed with bunzip2.
The bzip2 command supports the following command line switches.

Switch Effect
-c Redirect Output to stdout
-d Decompress instead of compress file

The following examples illustrate the use and relative efficiency of the compression commands.

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -sh termcap

725K termcap
[elvis@station elvis]$ gzip termcap
[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -sh termcap*
234K termcap.gz
[elvis@station elvis]$ gzip -d termcap
[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -sh termcap*
725K termcap

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -sh termcap

725K termcap
[elvis@station elvis]$ bzip2 termcap
[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -sh termcap*
185K termcap.bz2
[elvis@station elvis]$ bunzip2 termcap.bz2
[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -sh termcap*
725K termcap

Other Compression Utilities

Another compression utility available in Red Hat Enterprise Linux is zip. This utility is compatible with
the DOS/Windows PKzip/Winzip utilities and can compress more than one file into a single file,
something that gzip and bzip2 cannot do.
Linux and Unix users often prefer instead to use tar and gzip together in preference to zip. The
command tar is discussed in the next lesson.

Examples

Working with gzip

Madonna also has a copy of the same bigfile but prefers to use gzip compression.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 76
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 6. Compressing Files: gzip and bzip2

[madonna@station madonna]$ gzip bigfile

[madonna@station madonna]$ ls -l bigfile*
-rw-r--r-- 1 madonna madonna 131069 Mar 18 15:29 bigfile.gz
[madonna@station madonna]$ gunzip bigfile.gz
[madonna@station madonna]$ ls -l bigfile*
-rw-r--r-- 1 madonna madonna 409305 Mar 18 15:29 bigfile

Notice the better compression algorithm from this utility.

Using gzip Recursively

The gzip command includes a -r command line switch, which will recurse through subdirectories,
compressing individual files. In the following example, madonna will create a local copy of the
/etc/sysconfig/networking directory, and then recursively compress the copy.

[madonna@station madonna]$ cp -r /etc/sysconfig/networking .

[madonna@station madonna]$ gzip -r networking
[madonna@station madonna]$ tree networking/
networking/
|-- devices
| ‘-- ifcfg-eth0.gz
|-- ifcfg-lo.gz
‘-- profiles
|-- default
| |-- hosts.gz
| |-- ifcfg-eth0.gz
| |-- network.gz
| ‘-- resolv.conf.gz
‘-- netup
|-- hosts.gz
|-- ifcfg-eth0.gz
|-- network.gz
‘-- resolv.conf.gz

4 directories, 10 files

Working with bzip2

Elvis realizes that the compress utility that he first used is old and decides to try a much newer
compression utility.

[elvis@station elvis]$ bzip2 bigfile

[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l bigfile*
-rw-r--r-- 1 elvis elvis 154563 Mar 18 15:29 bigfile.bz2
[elvis@station elvis]$ bunzip2 bigfile.bz2
[elvis@station elvis]$ ls -l bigfile*
-rw-r--r-- 1 elvis elvis 409305 Mar 18 15:29 bigfile

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 77
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 6. Compressing Files: gzip and bzip2

Notice that to uncompress this archive, Elvis must give the filename with the bz2 extension. In the other
examples, the utility used could find a file of the given base name with a known extension.

Online Exercises

Working with compression Utilities

Lab Exercise
Objective: Compress large files
Estimated Time: 10 mins.

Specification

1. Copy the files /etc/gconf/schemas/gnome-terminal.schemas and /usr/bin/gimp into

your home directory, preserving their original filenames. (The first is an example of a large text file,
the second is an example of a large binary file.) Use the gzip command to compress each of the
newly created files.
2. Again, copy the files /etc/gconf/schemas/gnome-terminal.schemas and /usr/bin/gimp
into your home directory. This time, use the bzip2 command to compress the two files.
3. One last time, copy the /etc/gconf/schemas/gnome-terminal.schemas and
/usr/bin/gimp files into your home directory. Use the ls -s command to compare the sizes of the
various compression techniques.

Deliverables

1. The file gnome-terminal.schemas in your home directory, which is a copy of

/etc/gconf/schemas/gnome-terminal.schemas.

2. The file gnome-terminal.schemas.gz, the gziped version of gnome-terminal.schemas.

3. The file gnome-terminal.schemas.bz2, the bzip2ed version of gnome-terminal.schemas.
4. The file gimp in your home directory, which is a copy of /usr/bin/gimp.
5. The file gimp.gz, the gziped version of gimp.
6. The file gimp.bz2, the bzip2ed version of gimp.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 78
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 6. Compressing Files: gzip and bzip2

Questions

1. What filename extension is generally associated with files compressed using the bzip2 utility?
( ) a. .Z
( ) b. .gz
( ) c. .bz2
( ) d. .tar

2. What filename extension is generally associated with files compressed using the gzip utility?
( ) a. .Z
( ) b. .gz
( ) c. .bz2
( ) d. .tar

3. Which commands can uncompress a .gz file?

[ ] a. uncompress
[ ] b. gunzip
[ ] c. gzip -d
[ ] d. bunzip2

4. Why is compression most useful for text files?

( ) a. Binary files may get corrupted when compressed.
( ) b. Binary files are always larger after being compressed
( ) c. Utilities cannot compress a binary file
( ) d. Binary files are often already efficiently using space and little is gained by compressing them.

5. Assuming that the text files exist in the current directory, what will the command gzip report.txt draft.txt
schedule.txt produce?
( ) a. A single file with three text files in it.
( ) b. A single compressed file with three text files in it.
( ) c. Three compressed text files.
( ) d. An error message.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 79
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

Key Concepts
• Archiving files allows an entire directory structure to be stored as a single file.
• Archives are created, listed, and extracted with the tar command.
• Archive files are often compressed as well.
• The fileroller application provides a GUI interface to archiving files.

Discussion

Archive Files
Often, if a directory and its underlying files are not going to be used for a while, or if the entire directory
tree is going to be transferred from one place or another, people convert the directory tree into an archive
file. The archive contains the directory and its underlying files and subdirectories, packaged as a single
file. In Linux (and Unix), the most common command for creating and extracting archives is the tar
command.
Originally, archive files provided a solution to backing up disks to tape. When backing up a filesystem,
the entire directory structure would be converted into a single file, which was written directly to a tape
drive. The tar command derived its name from "t"ape "ar"chive.
Today, the tar is seldom used to write to tapes directly, but instead creates archive files which are often
referred to as "tar files", "tar archives", or sometimes informally as "tarballs". These archive files are
conventionally given the .tar filename extension.

Tar Command Basics

When running the tar command, the first command line must be selected from the following choices.

Switch Effect
-c, --create Create an archive file
-x, --extract Extract an archive file
-t, --list List the contents of an archive file

There are others, but almost always one of these three will suffice. See the tar(1) man page for more
details.
Next, almost every invocation of the tar command must include the -f command line switch and its
argument, which specifies which archive file is being created, extracted, or listed.

80
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

As an example, the user prince has been working on a report, which involves several subdirectories and
files.

report/
|-- html/
| |-- chap1.html
| |-- chap2.html
| ‘-- figures/
| ‘-- image1.png
‘-- text/
|-- chap1.txt
‘-- chap2.txt

3 directories, 5 files

He would like to email a copy of the report to a friend. Rather than attach each individual file to an email
message, he decides to create an archive of the report directory. He uses the tar command, specifying -c
to "c"reate an archive, and using the -f command line switch to specify the archive file to create.

[prince@station prince]$ tar -c -f report.tar report

[prince@station prince]$ ls -s
total 24
4 report 20 report.tar

The newly created archive file report.tar now contains the entire contents of the report directory,
and its subdirectories. In order to confirm that the archive was created correctly, prince lists the contents
of the archive file with the tar -t command (again using -f to specify which archive file).

[prince@station prince]$ tar -t -f report.tar

report/
report/text/
report/text/chap1.txt
report/text/chap2.txt
report/html/
report/html/figures/
report/html/figures/image1.png
report/html/chap1.html
report/html/chap2.html

As further confirmation, prince extracts the archive file in the /tmp directory, using tar -x.

[prince@station prince]$ cd /tmp

[prince@station tmp]$ tar -x -f /home/prince/report.tar
[prince@station tmp]$ ls -R report/
report/:
html text

report/html:
chap1.html chap2.html figures

report/html/figures:
image1.png

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 81
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

report/text:
chap1.txt chap2.txt

Now convinced that the archive file contains the report, and that his friend should be able to extract it, he
cleans up the test copy, and uses the mutt command to email the archive as an attachment.

[prince@station tmp]$ rm -fr report/

[prince@station tmp]$ cd
[prince@station prince]$ mutt -a report.tar -s "My Report" [email protected]

Don’t be concerned if you aren’t familiar with mutt. This just serves as an example of why someone
might want to create a tar archive.

More About tar

The first command line switch to the tar command must be one of the special switches discussed above.
Because the first switch is always one of a few choices, the tar command allows a shortcut; you do not
need to include the leading hyphen. Often, experienced users of tar will use shortened command lines
like the following.

[prince@station prince]$ tar cf report.tar report

[prince@station prince]$ tar tf report.tar
report/
report/text/
report/text/chap1.txt
report/text/chap2.txt
report/html/
report/html/figures/
report/html/figures/image1.png
report/html/chap1.html
report/html/chap2.html

Creating archives introduces a lot of complicated questions, such as some of the following.

• When creating archives, how should links be handled? Do I archive the link, or what the link refers to?
• When extracting archives as root, do I want all of the files to be owned by root, or by the original
owner? What if the original owner doesn’t exist on the system I’m unpacking the tar on?
• What happens if the tape drive I’m archiving to runs out of room in the middle of the archive?
The answers to these, and many other questions as well, can be decided with an overwhelming number
of command line switches to the tar command, as tar --help or a quick look at the tar(1) man page will
demonstrate. The following table lists some of the more commonly used switches, and there use will be
discussed below.

Switch Effect
-C, --directory=DIR Change to directory DIR
-P, --absolute-reference don’t strip leading / from filenames
-v, --verbose list files processed

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation 82
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print

format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

Switch Effect
-z, --gzip internally gzip archive
-j, --bzip2 internally bzip2 archive

Absolute References
Suppose prince wanted to archive a snapshot of the current networking configuration of his machine. He
might run a command like the following. (Note the inclusion of the -v command line switch, which lists
each file as it is processed.)

[prince@station prince]$ tar cvf net.tar /etc/sysconfig/networking

tar: Removing leading ‘/’ from member names
etc/sysconfig/networking/
etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/
etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0
etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/
etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/
etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/network
...

As the leading message implies, what was an absolute reference to /etc/sysconfig/networking is

converted to relative references inside the archive: None of the entries have leading slashes. Why is this
done? What happens if prince turns right around and extracts the archive?

[prince@station prince]$ tar xvf net.tar

etc/sysconfig/networking/
etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/
etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0
etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/
etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/
etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/network
etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/resolv.conf
...
[prince@station prince]$ ls -R etc/
etc/:
sysconfig

etc/sysconfig:
networking

etc/sysconfig/networking:
devices ifcfg-lo profiles

etc/sysconfig/networking/devices:
ifcfg-eth0

etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles:
default netup

etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default:
hosts ifcfg-eth0 network resolv.conf

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 83
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/netup:
hosts ifcfg-eth0 network resolv.conf

Because the file entries were relative, the archive unpacked into the local directory. As a rule, archive
files will always unpack locally, reducing the chance that you will unintentionally clobber files in your
filesystem by unpacking an archive on top of them. When constructing the archive, this behavior can be
overridden with the -P command line switch.

Establishing Context
When extracting the archive above, the first "interesting" directory is the networking directory, because
it contains the relevant subdirectories and files. When extracting the archive, however, and "extra" etc
and etc/sysconfig are created. In order to get to the interesting directory, someone has to work his
way down to it.
When constructing an archive, the -C command line switch can be used to help establish context by
changing directory before the archive is constructed. Compare the following two tar commands.

[prince@station prince]$ tar cvf net.tar /etc/sysconfig/networking

tar: Removing leading ‘/’ from member names
etc/sysconfig/networking/
etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/
etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0
etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/
etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/
etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/network
...
[prince@station prince]$ tar cvf net.tar -C /etc/sysconfig networking
networking/
networking/devices/
networking/devices/ifcfg-eth0
networking/profiles/
networking/profiles/default/
networking/profiles/default/network
...

In the second case, the tar command first changes to the /etc/sysconfig directory, and then creates a
copy of the networking directory found there. When the resulting archive file is extracted, the
"interesting" directory is immediately available.
Of course, prince could have used the cd command before running the tar command to the same effect,
but the -C command line switch is often more efficient.

Compressing archives
Often, the tar command is used to archive files that will not be used anytime soon. Because the resulting
archive files will not be used soon, they are compressed as well. In the following, prince is able to save a
significant amount of disk space by gziping his archive of his home directory.

[prince@station prince]$ tar cf /tmp/prince.tar -C /home/prince .

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 84
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

[prince@station prince]$ ls -s /tmp/prince.tar

224 /tmp/prince.tar
[prince@station prince]$ gzip /tmp/prince.tar
[prince@station prince]$ ls -s /tmp/prince.tar.gz
28 /tmp/prince.tar.gz

Because users are often creating and then compressing archives, or dealing with archives that have been
compressed, the tar command provides three command line switches for internally compressing (or
decompressing) archive files. Above, prince could have obtained the same result by adding a -z
command line switch.

[prince@station prince]$ tar czf /tmp/prince.tar.gz -C /home/prince .

[prince@station prince]$ ls -s /tmp/prince.tar.gz
28 /tmp/prince.tar.gz

The combination of tar and gzip is found so often, that often the .tar.gz filename extension will be
abbreviated .tgz.

[prince@station prince]$ tar czf /tmp/prince.tgz -C /home/prince .

[prince@station prince]$ tar tzf /tmp/prince.tgz
./
./.bash_profile
./Desktop/
./Desktop/redhat_academy.desktop
./.bashrc
./.bash_logout
./.zshrc

With older versions of the tar command, when expanding or listing a tar archive, you would have to
respecify the appropriate compression ( with the -z or -j command line switches). In recent version of
Red Hat Enterprise Linux, however, the tar command will now automatically recognize a compressed
archive, and decompress it appropriately.

[prince@station prince]$ tar tf /tmp/prince.tgz

./
./.bash_profile
./Desktop/
./Desktop/redhat_academy.desktop
./.bashrc
./.bash_logout
./.zshrc

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 85
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

Examples

Creating a tar Archive

The user einstein wants to make a copy of the bash documentation that he can take along with him. He
quickly tars up the /usr/share/doc/bash-2.05b directory.

[einstein@station einstein]$ tar cvzf bashdoc.tgz -C /usr/share/doc bash-3.1

bash-3.1/
bash-3.1/bashref.ps
bash-3.1/bash.0
bash-3.1/bash.html
bash-3.1/article.ps
bash-3.1/complete/
bash-3.1/complete/complete2.ianmac
...
[einstein@station einstein]$ ls -s bashdoc.tgz
1240 bashdoc.tgz

Once he gets the file to its new location, he extracts the archive.

[einstein@station einstein]$ tar xvf bashdoc.tgz

bash-3.1/
bash-3.1/bashref.ps
bash-3.1/bash.0
bash-3.1/bash.html
bash-3.1/article.ps
bash-3.1/complete/
bash-3.1/complete/complete2.ianmac
...

Tarring Directly to a Floppy

The user maxwell wants to quickly compare the LDAP configuration on two different machines. The
machines are not connected to a network, but both have a floppy drive. Rather than creating an archive,
formatting a floppy, mounting the floppy, copying the archive, and unmounting the floppy, maxwell
decides to save a few steps. With an unmounted floppy in the drive, maxwell runs the following
command.

[maxwell@station maxwell]$ tar cvzf /dev/fd0 -C /etc openldap

openldap/
openldap/ldapfilter.conf
openldap/ldap.conf
openldap/ldapsearchprefs.conf
openldap/ldaptemplates.conf

He then ejects the floppy and carries it to the second machine. The following command extracts the
archive into his local directory.

[maxwell@station maxwell]$ tar xvzf /dev/fd0

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 86
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is
a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether
in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed
please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

openldap/
openldap/ldapfilter.conf
openldap/ldap.conf
openldap/ldapsearchprefs.conf
openldap/ldaptemplates.conf
openldap/ldaptemplates.conf

gzip: stdin: decompression OK, trailing garbage ignored

tar: Child died with signal 13
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Although the tar command (or, more accurately, the gzip command) complained about "trailing
garbage", the archive was successfully extracted.
What happened here? The tar command wrote directly to the floppy’s device node, so the archive file was
written byte for byte onto the floppy as raw data. Upon extracting the archive, the file was read byte for
byte, until the file was entirely read. The gzip command kept going, however, trying to decompress
whatever was sitting on the floppy before the archive was written. This is the "trailing garbage" that the
gzip command complained about. What was the filename of the archive as it was sitting on the floppy?
(Trick question!)

Oops.
The user einstein wants to create an archive of his home directory. He tries the following command.

[einstein@station einstein]$ tar cvzf ~/einstein.tgz ~

tar: Removing leading ‘/’ from member names
home/einstein/
home/einstein/.kde/
home/einstein/.kde/Autostart/
...
home/einstein/.bash_history
home/einstein/einstein.tgz
tar: /home/einstein/einstein.tgz: file changed as we read it
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Why did the tar command error out? The archive was being written to the file
/home/einstein/einstein.tgz. The archive included every file in the /home/einstein directory.
Eventually, the tar command tried to append the file /home/einstein/einstein.tgz to the archive
/home/einstein/einstein.tgz. This obviously causes problems.
Fortunately, the tar command is now smart enough to detect circular references. In the (not too distant)
"old days", the first clue that something was wrong in situations like this was the long time it took the tar
command to run, and the second clue was the error message saying that the disk was out of space.
What’s the solution? Make sure that the archive file you’re creating does not exist in the directory your
archiving. The /tmp directory comes in handy.

[einstein@station einstein]$ tar czf /tmp/einstein.tgz ~

tar: Removing leading ‘/’ from member names
[einstein@station einstein]$ mv /tmp/einstein.tgz .

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 87
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

Online Exercises

Archiving Directories

Lab Exercise
Objective: Create an archive using the tar command.
Estimated Time: 15 mins.

Specification

1. In your home directory, create the file zip_docs.tar which is an archive of the documentation for
the zip package located in the /usr/share/doc/zip* directory.
2. Create the file /tmp/student.tgz, which is a gziped archive of your home directory. Replace
student with your username.

Deliverables

1. The file zip_docs.tar in your home directory, which is an archive of the /usr/share/doc/zip* directory.
2. The file /tmp/student.tgz, with student replaced with your username, which is a gziped archive of your
home directory.

Creating a Raw Archive on a Floppy

Lab Exercise
Objective: Create an archive directly to a floppy.
Estimated Time: 5 mins.

Setup
The lab requires a floppy disk. In the lab, the contents of the disk will be overwritten.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 88
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used,
copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

Specification

1. Write a raw, gzip compressed tar archive of the /usr/share/doc/gzip* directory directly to a
floppy. Specify the directory using an absolute reference.
2. Extract the archive from the floppy disk into your home directory. Leave the floppy in the drive
when you are done.

Deliverables

1. A floppy containing a raw, gzip compressed archive of the /usr/share/doc/gzip* directory, where the
directory was specified as an absolute reference.
2. In your home directory, the directories usr/share/doc/... which were extracted from your floppy.

Possible Solution
The following command is one solution for step 1 of your exercise.

[student@station student]$ tar cvzf /dev/fd0 /usr/share/doc/gzip-*

Questions

1. Which of the following commands would create an archive called archive.tar?

( ) a. tar -c -f archive.tar
( ) b. tar -x -f archive.tar /usr/games
( ) c. tar -t -f archive.tar /usr/games
( ) d. tar -c -f archive.tar /usr/games
( ) e. None of the above.

2. Which of the following commands would list the contents of an archive file called archive.tar?
( ) a. tar tf archive.tar
( ) b. tar -xf archive.tar
( ) c. tar -c -f archive.tar

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 89
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

( ) d. tar --list archive.tar

( ) e. None of the above.

3. Which of the following commands would extract the contents of an archive file called archive.tar?
( ) a. tar tf archive.tar
( ) b. tar -xf archive.tar
( ) c. tar -c -f archive.tar
( ) d. tar --list archive.tar
( ) e. None of the above.

4. You have downloaded a file titled linux-2.5.34.tar.gz. Which of the following commands can you run to
extract the contents of the file?
[ ] a. tar xvzf linux-2.5.34.tar.gz
[ ] b. tar -x -f linux-2.5.34.tar.gz
[ ] c. tar -x -z -f linux-2.5.34.tar.gz
[ ] d. tar -xZf linux-2.5.34.tar.gz
[ ] e. tar fz linux-2.5.34.tar.gz
[ ] f. tar -x -f linux-2.5.34.tar.gz -z

5. You would like to make a bzip2 compressed archive of the /usr/share/sounds directory, so that when
someone extracts the archive, it extracts starting with the directory sounds. Which of the following commands will
create the archive?
( ) a. tar -c -f /tmp/sounds.tar.bz2 /usr/share/sounds
( ) b. tar cvjf /tmp/sounds.tar.bz2 -C /usr/share sounds
( ) c. tar -c -f /tmp/sounds.tar.bz2 -C /usr/share/sounds -j
( ) d. tar -cj /tmp/sounds.tar.bz2 -f /usr/share/sounds
( ) e. None of the above

6. What filename extension does the tar command add automatically when creating an archive?
( ) a. .tar
( ) b. .tgz
( ) c. .tar.gz
( ) d. .zip
( ) e. No extension is added by tar.

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 90
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other use is a violation
of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise duplicated whether in electronic or print
format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or otherwise improperly distributed please email
[email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.
 Chapter 7. Archiving Files with tar

7. Usually, when a tar archive is extracted with the command tar xzf archive.tgz, where are the files placed?
( ) a. Relative to the root of the current filesystem
( ) b. Relative to the current working directory
( ) c. Relative to the directory specified on the command line
( ) d. Relative to the root of the root filesystem
( ) e. Relative to the /tmp directory

8. A file has been downloaded called archive.tgz. How can you view the contents of this archive?
[ ] a. tar tzvf archive.tgz
[ ] b. tar jtvf archive.tgz
[ ] c. tar tvf archive.tgz
[ ] d. tar cvzf archive.tgz
[ ] e. tar tf archive.tgz

rha030-5.0-2-en-2007-10-16T13:02:43-0400 91
Copyright (c) 2003-2007 Red Hat, Inc. All rights reserved. For use only by a student enrolled in a Red Hat Academy course taught at a Red Hat Academy. Any other
use is a violation of U.S. and international copyrights. No part of this publication may be photocopied, duplicated, stored in a retrieval system, or otherwise
duplicated whether in electronic or print format without prior written consent of Red Hat, Inc. If you believe Red Hat course materials are being used, copied, or
otherwise improperly distributed please email [email protected] or phone toll-free (USA) +1 866 626 2994 or +1 (919) 754 3700.