Common Commands

Formatting Hard Drives

Source: nixCraft

Partition the new disk

sudo fdisk -l | grep '^Disk'

Output:

Disk /dev/sda: 111.8 GiB, 119998218240 bytes, 234371520 sectors
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: <some identifier>
Disk /dev/sdc: 447.1 GiB, 480070426624 bytes, 937637552 sectors
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier:  <some identifier>
Disk /dev/sdb: 111.8 GiB, 119998218240 bytes, 234371520 sectors
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier:  <some identifier>

Partition the disk you want. In this case, I’m partitioning the second disk or sdb

sudo fdisk /dev/sdb

Generally, you would delete the partitions you need to and add the partitions as needed. When creating a new partition, I generally use a primary partition if I’m going to use the whole disk

Format the new disk

To format the Linux partition on the new disk

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1

Mount the new disk

The general process is to create a mount point and then mount the disk to the mount point

sudo mkdir /[new directory name for mount point]
sudo mount /dev/sdb1 /[new directory name for mount point]
df -H

Update the /etc/fstab file

sudo vi /etc/fstab

Append the following line to the file

/dev/sdb1            /[new directory name for mount point]     ext4    defaults 1 2

File Management

Deleting Files

Delete files older than 30 days

find [directory name] -type f -mtime +[number of days] -exec rm -f {} \;
find /opt/backup -type f -mtime +30 -exec rm -f {} \;

Delete files with a filter

find [directory name] -name "[file filter]" -type f -mtime +[number of days] -exec rm -f {} \;
find /var/log -name "*.log" -type f -mtime +30 -exec rm -f {} \;