(RHCSA) Configure Local Storage

This is part of the independent and unofficial RHCSA Exam Study Guide series providing free 🤑 resources to prepare for the exam.

This post covers the objectives under the section:

“CONFIGURE LOCAL STORAGE”

It contains two main parts:

• Resources: with links to learn and practice for each objective.
• Cheatsheet: containing some examples of commands and actions performed in each objective (when applied).

📚 Resources:

Attention: You must add more virtual disks to the RHEL virtual machine in order to practice for this objective.

• 📌 How to add new drives to a VirtualBox virtual machine (this is s setup step! Follow the “Adding the disk” section only.)

• 📌 RHCSA v8 Practice Session: Configure local storage (a single video presenting of all the objectives below)

LIST, CREATE, DELETE PARTITIONS ON MBR AND GPT DISKS

• 📌 Appendix A. An Introduction to Disk Partitions

• 📌 A.2. Strategies for Disk Repartitioning

• 📌 A.3. Partition Naming Schemes and Mount Points

• 📌 Chapter 3. Getting started with partitions

• 📌 How To Create a Partition Using “parted” Command

• 📌 Creating and managing partitions in Linux with parted

• 📌 gdisk Command: How to Create GUID Partitions (GPT) in Linux (skip “Formatting the partition in Linux” and following sections.)

CREATE AND REMOVE PHYSICAL VOLUMES / ASSIGN PHYSICAL VOLUMES TO VOLUME GROUPS / CREATE AND DELETE LOGICAL VOLUMES

• 📌 Introduction to LVM | Linux Academy

• 📌 Chapter 1. Logical volumes

• 📌 Logical Volume Manager (LVM) versus standard partitioning in Linux

• 📌 How to create a physical volume in Linux using LVM

• 📌 How to create a volume group in Linux with LVM

• 📌 Creating logical volumes in Linux with LVM

• 📌 RHCSA v8: Linux Logical Volume Manager

CONFIGURE SYSTEMS TO MOUNT FILE SYSTEMS AT BOOT BY UNIVERSALLY UNIQUE ID (UUID) OR LABEL

• 📌 Linux File System Types

• 📌 Chapter 1. Overview of available file systems

• 📌 Using mkfs command in Linux to Format the Filesystem on a Disk or Partition

• 📌 How to Use the mkfs Command on Linux

• 📌 Chapter 14. Mounting file systems

• 📌 An introduction to the Linux /etc/fstab file

• 📌 Chapter 16. Persistently mounting file systems

• 📌 Linux Essentials - Automatically mounting storage volumes with /etc/fstab

ADD NEW PARTITIONS AND LOGICAL VOLUMES, AND SWAP TO A SYSTEM NON-DESTRUCTIVELY

• 📌 What is Linux swap?

• 📌 Chapter 11. Getting started with swap

• 📌 Managing swap in the modern Linux system

• 📌 How to add swap space in linux

📑 Cheatsheet:

LIST, CREATE, DELETE PARTITIONS ON MBR AND GPT DISKS

• lsblk ➡ list block devices.

• parted /dev/vdb mklabel msdos ➡ label a new disk as msdos.

• parted /dev/vdb print ➡ display disk info.

• parted /dev/vdb mkpart primary 1 101m ➡ create a new primary partition on disk, with size of 100mb.

• parted /dev/vdb rm 1 ➡ remove partition 1.

• gdisk /dev/vdc ➡ create/modify partitions on disk using gdisk.

• partprobe ➡ inform the OS of partition table changes.

• wipefs --all /dev/vdg ➡ wipe any partition table, fs, RAID signatures from block device.

CREATE AND REMOVE PHYSICAL VOLUMES / ASSIGN PHYSICAL VOLUMES TO VOLUME GROUPS / CREATE AND DELETE LOGICAL VOLUMES

• vgs, pvs, lvs ➡ list volume groups, physical volumes and logical volumes.

• pvcreate /dev/vdc ➡ initialize physical volume to use in LVM.

• pvremove /dev/vdb /dev/vdc ➡ uninitialize physical volumes.

• vgcreate vg100 /dev/vdb -s 16M ➡ create volume group using /dev/vdb physical volume, with PE size of 16MB.

• vgdisplay vg100 ➡ check vg100 attributes.

• vgextend vg100 /dev/vdc ➡ extend volume gropup adding a new physical volume.

• vgremove vg100 ➡ remove volume group.

• lvcreate -L 100M vg100 -n lvol0 ➡ create logical volume lvol0 on vg100 with 100MB of size.

• lvextend -L +200M /dev/vg100/lvol0 ➡ expand logical volume size.

• lvextend -r -L +80M /dev/vg200/lv200 ➡ extend local volume and its file system.

• lvreduce -L -252M /dev/vg100/lvol0 ➡ reduce logical volume size.

• lvremove /dev/vg100/lvol0 ➡ remove logical volume.

CONFIGURE SYSTEMS TO MOUNT FILE SYSTEMS AT BOOT BY UNIVERSALLY UNIQUE ID (UUID) OR LABEL

• blkid ➡ locate/print block devices attributes (ex.: UUID).

• df -h ➡ show file distem disk usage.

• du -sh /usr/bin ➡ show dir disk usage.

• du -sc /etc /usr/bin ➡ show disk usage for each dir and the sum of both.

• lsblk -f ➡ list block devices, show file system type and UUID.

• mkfs.vfat /dev/sdd1 ➡ initialize the partition with the VFAT filesystem type.

• /etc/fstab example entries:

  • UUID=3C65-A634 /vfatfs5 vfat defaults 0 0
  • UUID=7eaf462a-ecd2-4d09-91d0-09bdba6fa491 /ext4fs5 ext4 defaults 0 0
  • UUID=d9cdb722-ad2d-4d2c-901d-d274950ccc55 /xfsfs5 xfs defaults 0 0
  • /dev/mapper/vdo5 /vdofs5 xfs _netdev-systemd.requires=vdo.service 0 0
  • /dev/vg200/lv200 /lvmfs5 ext4 defaults 0 0
  • /dev/vg200/lv300 /lvmfs6 xfs defaults 0 0
  • UUID=a30f9774-a11d-4a01-ad87-4bfa6f74ba64 /strfs5 xfs _netdev-systemd.requires=stratisd.service 0 0
  • /dev/vde1 swap swap defaults 0 0
  • /dev/vg200/swapvol swap swap defaults 0 0

• mount -a ➡ mount all fs mentioned on fstab.

• mount -o rw /stratis/strpool5/strfs5 /strfs5 ➡ mount strfs5 stratis fs on /strfs5 dir.

• lsblk /stratis/strpool5/strfs5 -o UUID > /tmp/uuid ➡ save strfs5 fs UUID on a temp file.

ADD NEW PARTITIONS AND LOGICAL VOLUMES, AND SWAP TO A SYSTEM NON-DESTRUCTIVELY

• mkswap /dev/vde1 ➡ initialize partition with swap structures.

• mkswap -L swappart /dev/vde1 ➡ apply swappart label to partition.

• swapon -a ➡ activate all swap partitions described on fstab.

• swapon -s ➡ list all active swap partitions.

Next:

(RHCSA) Create and Configure File Systems

…or back to Red Hat Certified System Administrator (RHCSA) Exam Study Guide

Useful links & references:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux Documentation

• Enable Sysadmin (a blog from Red Hat)

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