A workstation will be reinstalled from scratch every couple of years, with the operating system filesystem reformatted each time, but the users' documents and per-user settings must survive untouched. Which directory most deserves a filesystem of its own?
LPIC-1 Exam 101-500, objective 102. Linux installation and package management easy
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How these questions are written — where each question comes from, what the verification ledger records, and what happens when one is found wrong.
The options
Correct /home
Correct. User home directories live under /home, so keeping it on its own filesystem lets the installer reformat / while /home is merely re-mounted.
Not correct /usr
Wrong. /usr holds shareable read-only program and library files supplied by the distribution; it is replaced by a reinstall, not preserved.
Not correct /tmp
Wrong. /tmp is temporary data that programs must not expect to survive even a reboot, let alone a reinstall.
Not correct /usr/local
Wrong for this requirement. /usr/local is a sensible separate filesystem for locally built software, but it is not where user documents are kept.
Why
Separating a directory onto its own filesystem is a design decision driven by what must be isolated: data that outlives the OS (/home), data that grows unpredictably (/var), or data that must be read by the firmware (the ESP). /home is the canonical example of data whose lifetime is longer than the installation, so it goes on its own partition or logical volume and is simply listed in /etc/fstab after the reinstall.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- manual page hier(7)
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a short set from objective 102 and space the ones you get wrong.
More questions on this objective
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