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A Linux machine has typical locations for the storage of most common things a system needs to run. Their contents:
- /
- The filesystem root where all of the "directory tree" grows out of
- /boot
- The kernel. This is usually a separate Partition at the beginning of the hard drive.
- /bin
- System executable files for use by all users
- /dev
- Device nodes, ie files that represent your computer's periphery
- /etc
- Configuration files for programs
- /home
- One subdirectory for each user to store all their personal files in. Your own subdirectory here is called your home and is commonly abbreviated as ~, though this must be explicitly supported by the program in question (all Shells do).
- /lib
- libraries needed to run the programs in /bin and /sbin
- /mnt
- MountPoint for temporary filesystems (eg CDROM, floppy disk)
- /opt
- Intended for additional, self-contained software packages in subdirectories, such as TarBalls which contain binaries rather than source. KDE is often found in /opt/kde, even though it doesn't fit the "self-contained" criterion. Some people install source TarBalls in here too, especially beta software.
- /proc
- A virtual FileSystem containing pseudo files with information about the hardware and Kernel configuration and the running processes
- /root
- Home directory of the root SuperUser
- /sbin
- Executable files only of interest to the root SuperUser
- /usr
- Files that can be shared across a whole site among multiple users
- /usr/local
- Anything shared across the system but not supplied by the system vendor traditionally goes here -- most commonly, packages compiled from TarBalls
- /var
- Variable data files, such as logs, mail and printer spools
- /tmp
- Temporary files -- that is literally temporary files. On some systems this directory is frequently purged, and on machines with modern Linux kernels it may be mounted as Tmpfs FileSystem that exists only in memory. When VirtualMemory subsystems were not as good as they are today, many userland programs had to explicitly balance memory and disk consumption in /tmp/, and some still do (such as find(1)).
More information can be found at the filesystem hierarchy standard, and in hier(7).
CategoryBeginners