Essential Unix Administration

Use sfdisk with block units and find out the partitions which exist in /dev/sda. How many blocks are in the first partition?

Enter a number:

Use the pvdisplay command of LVM to discover what physical volume (i.e. which partition) is being managed by LVM. What is the partition being used (PV Name) and what is the volume group name (VG Name)?

PV Name:
VG Name:

Use lvdisplay to discover information about the VG Name found in the previous question. What is the first LV Path which is using the volume group discovered in the previous question?

LV Path:

Using the path discovered in the previous question, look at this path in the /dev directory using a long listing ls command. Assuming this is in fact a soft link, what is the ABSOLUTE device name which this link is pointing to?

Absolute device name:

For mounting this logical volume, the current method is NOT to use the volume name, or even the device it points to. Instead the device mapper is used, which can support different layers (such as encryption on top of something else). This can be found in /dev/mapper.

Look in /dev/mapper, and find the soft link which points to the device file identified in the previous question. What is the relative name of this link? So if the link was /dev/mapper/gordon, the answer wanted here is "gordon".

Mapper link name:

Look in the fstab mount table. Find the line which mounts this partition via the mapper device. Where is this partition mounted?

Mount directory:

One can also mount things using the filesystem block id (which is the UUID shown in fstab). What block id could you use instead of the mapper mount in this case? It is in a format like ffffff-ffff-fffff-fffff-ffffffffff.

block id for mapper filesystem:

Recall that you discovered the device file in /dev which the LVM mapper entry was soft linked to. What was the major and minor number of this device?

Major number:
Minor number:

Somewhere in the /proc filesystem there is a file which tells you how much swap space has been allocated to the computer. Find that file and then find out how big in bytes the swap space is. Hint: the information that you require is located within the /proc directory within a file .

Enter a number:

What is the process id of rsyslogd? Hint: remember the 'ps aux' command?

Enter a number:

Kill rsyslogd using the kill command.

Using systemctl, get the status of the rsyslog service. What is the full path to the systemd configuration file which controls the rsyslog serice?

Systemd file:

Look at this configuration file. Find the line which configures the environmental variables of rsyslog (EnvironmentFile). Ignoring the "=" or the "=-" if it exists, what is the environment file for this service?

Config file:

Restart the rsyslogd services using systemctl. Confirm it is running using the status option.

Start the database. This is called mariadb. This may take a few seconds.

Using systemctl, discover the process id (PID) for the main process. Note, mariadb has many processes, so make sure you select the Main PID.

Main PID:

What user is the owner of this process? Use the "ps" command with the appropriate flags.

Main PID owner:

If the main pid is the parent of the database, what is the PID of the first child of this parent pid? So if you have the process name for this PID, then pstree might help here.

PID of First Child:

Set the mariadb to run next time you boot your virtual machine.

Systemctl has an option "list-unit-files", which says which things are enabled for running at boot. How many units are enabled?

Enter a number:

How many enabled units are socket units?

Enter a number:

Now set the mariadb so that it DOES NOT run next time you boot your virtual machine.