i think i have this same class in this semester as the OP. i have however tried and seem to be stuck. i am thinking this so far

/dev/sda1 - has the 90gb ext4 on it
/dev/sda2 - has the 4gb swap
/dev/sda3 - has the 200gb database on it
/dev/sda4 - has the 500gb user files in home dir with ext4

i am unsure as to where to mount them. is there a specific spot after the / dir that i should mount these? this is the 5th chapter in the book so we haven't gone that deep yet. i am guessing the etc/fstab for startup would look something like this...

/dev/sda1 / ext4 default 1 1
/dev/sda2 swap swap default 1 1
/dev/sda3 /database reiserfs default 1 1
/dev/sda4 /home ext4 default 1 1

is there some cli cmd that i can use to mount all the users at once or does the /home mount cmd in fstab do that for me?

The home directories of the users are on the home partition so adding home in fstab is enough.
To limit the users to 5GB you have to use a form of quota.
And to prevent downtime as a result of a harddisk failure you might use some form of raid.
So first determine which form of raid do you want.
Then determine space needed and quota's and partitions.
Then determine commands to accomplish this.

we arent allowed to use raid config b/c we dont learn about that till next chapter. sorry..i should have addressed the quota thing but i know how to do that but should have stated. sorry again.

i know i need 794 GB of HD space. i would add the aquota.user and aquota.group and then type edquota and use vi to edit the file so the hard limit for each user to 5GB. as far as the entry into etc/fstab would it just be:

/dev/sda4 /home ext4 defaults usrquota, grpquota 1 1 ??

For swap the last 2 nums should be '0 0'; you don't fsck or dump a swap partition.
The boot process will (attempt to ) mount all entries in fstab; no need to code that yourself.
Couple of useful cmds
Also, tell us what distro this is for
Useful link
http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

typo in that fstab entry. there are only six fields, but with the spaces you have there are 8.

The option field should be "defaults,usrquota,grpquota"

chris....this is for a linux intro class and we are using fedora 15.

jpollard....thanks but i was typing it like that so it could be easily read. i will shore it up before i turn it in to the professor. thanks in advance.. glad to know i am making strides into the world of linux.

At the end of the partition.

Learned this the hard way and had to install Debian twice because by mounting at the 'beginning' the distro only gave me grub rescue mode.

Just be aware that Fedora is on v18, with 19 due out in a few mths: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora...ting_system%29 .
Be careful if you try to update it...

Minor note: "defaults" is just a syntactic placeholder that's needed when you have no other options you want to specify in field 4. Its presence in combination with other options is harmless, but does nothing.

Thanks Chris

Going to install FC 18 in a few days.
I wait a while to allow the Developers to get the bugs out-

This is one of the best written fstab tutorials I have found. I keep returning to it when I have fstab questions. Maybe it will help:

http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/fstab.html

If you're in a class & they are using Fedora, you don't really have a choice I suppose, BUT you should know that Fedora is effectively RedHat's R&D distro and not prod stable (which is why they don't support it).
Not a biggie, but just FYI ...
For a real prod system I'd either pay for RHEL (inc support), or get the Centos equiv (a free RHEL rebuild; no paid support).
See the wikipedia articles on those 3 ...

No, not in a class. If I were; your right on the no choice:-
Being that Fedora is indeed R&D for Red Hat this is going to be the last time I'm installing Fedora.
I already burned the ISO to DVD/CD so I might as well enjoy it-
I am looking at Centos and Slackware trying to decide what distro I permanently want for a while-
Thanks and have a good weekend!