A Tour of the Linux File System
Take a tour of the Linux filesystem. Drive down /bin Street, cruise over to /usr Lane, and buy some souvenirs over in /dev Drive.
Thursday, August 23rd, 2007
I just purchased a GPS navigation device, and after only a handful of uses, I am hooked. Getting from Point A to Point B is now a snap. No more MapQuest. No more guessing which way is east. No more pit stops in the sticks to ask for clarifications. I simply jump in my car, specify my destination, and follow the voice prompts. Why, the GPS makes me look like a local, giving new meaning to the Buckaroo Banzai maxim, “Wherever you go, there you are.”
Let’s indulge my wanderlust this month and ramble around the Unix filesystem. From /bin to /var, there are lots of interesting sights to see — some well-trodden and others obscure — and shortly, you’ll know your way around like the locals.
What’s in a file name?
The files on a Unix machine are organized in a hierarchy. The very top of the hierarchy is / — commonly referred to as “slash” or “the root directory”.
If you change directory to / and run ls, you’ll see a number of subdirectories, with cryptic names like “etc”, “bin”, “var”, “home”, and “tmp”. Although Unix now supports long file names, most of the monikers of these top-level directories hark back some thirty years to Unix’s origin. Similarly, by the same long-standing conventions, each directory contained in / serves a special purpose.
