| Lesson 9 | Resolving filesystem problems |
| Objective | Resolve filesystem problems. |
Resolving Filesystem Problems
All administrators will eventually have to resolve filesystem problems. To be prepared to repair any damage that may occur, you should have a back-up plan implemented for all systems detailing how frequently full backups (all files) and incremental backups
(all files created and/or modified since the last backup) are performed.
Many sites perform a full backup weekly and an incremental backup daily. For critical data, backups may be needed more frequently.
The following table lists common problems and the measures you can take to prevent them.
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Problems
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Preventative measures
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Overflow of the root partition that can freeze the computer
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Is usually prevented by putting /tmp and /var/tmp
(and sometimes /usr/tmp) in different partitions other than root.
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Filesystem corruption caused by an improper shutdown
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Is usually caught at boot with the automated run of e2fsck against all filesystems. When e2fsck
finds problems, it will ask you if you want to correct them. Because you are required to answer yes, consistent backups are vital to
minimize the loss of data.
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Minor Disk failure
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Is prevented by replacing the drives in question, or at least demoting them to noncritical data. Minor disk
failures are the appearance of bad blocks on the disk. These are usually flagged by e2fsck during its periodic checks.
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The rule of thumb with disk failure is to know that disk failure will happen to you eventually. Be prepared and back up your data.
The next lesson concludes this module.
Troubleshooting Filesystem Problems - Quiz
