This beginner course develops a practical view of Linux storage, from block-device discovery and filesystem mounting to inode troubleshooting and flexible LVM volumes. Across seven guided labs, you will inspect storage, configure temporary and persistent mounts, investigate space consumption, and build and resize storage on prepared virtual devices.
The final recovery challenge applies a cautious operations workflow: locate a prepared oversized log, verify its type, empty its contents without deleting the file, and confirm the recovered state.
What You Will Learn
- Inspect disks, partitions, filesystems, mount points, and exact device sizes with
lsblk - Mount a prepared disk image through a loop device, verify access, and unmount it safely
- Back up and edit
/etc/fstab, then test a persistent loop mount withmount -a - Locate and rank large files and directories with
find,du,sort, andhead - Diagnose inode capacity with
df -iand inspect file inode numbers withls -i - Initialize prepared loop devices as LVM physical volumes and combine them into a volume group
- Create, format, mount, extend, and grow an ext4 logical volume
- Recover space by verifying and truncating a prepared log while preserving the file
Who This Course Is For
This course is for Linux learners and aspiring system or DevOps administrators who understand basic files and permissions and want guided practice with storage inspection, mounts, capacity troubleshooting, and introductory LVM.
Prerequisites: Basic terminal navigation, file inspection, pipes, redirection, and sudo; prior LVM experience is not required.
Learning environment: A provided Ubuntu-based LabEx terminal with disposable disk images, loop devices, prepared LVM storage, a backed-up configuration workflow, and challenge-specific log data.
Frequently Asked Questions
How is the course structured?
Seven labs provide guided practice. The eighth item is a disk-space recovery challenge where you investigate /var, record evidence, truncate a prepared log, and verify the result with less guidance.
Will I create or repartition a physical disk?
No. You use lsblk to inspect devices and partitions, but the course does not use fdisk or repartition a real disk. Write operations target prepared disk images, loop devices, and LVM resources in the lab.
Does the LVM section build one volume from start to finish?
The concepts form a complete path, but the two labs use prepared, independent states: one creates physical volumes and a volume group, while the next starts with an available volume group and focuses on a logical volume, ext4, mounting, and live growth.
Why does the recovery challenge truncate the log instead of deleting it?
The prepared application is expected to keep the same file path. Truncation reduces the file to zero bytes while preserving the file itself; the challenge explicitly verifies that it still exists.
