THE ROOT FILE SYSTEM

The /Directory (The root file system)

Figure 1

• Ø /bin: consists of commands that are used by both the system administrator as well as non-privileged users.  This directory usually contains the shells like bash, csh etc. as well as much used commands like cp, mv, rm, cat, Is.
• Ø /sbin: Consists of commands that are specific to the system administrator.
• Ø /etc: Contains all the configuration files for your system.
• Ø /root: provides the home directory for the superuser.  The superuser is the user who is login with the root account.
• Ø /lib: Consists of shared libraries needed by the programs on the rot file system.
• Ø /lib/modules: provides you with loadable kernel modules.  Especially those that are needed to boot the system when recovering from disasters such as, network and filesystem driver.
• Ø /dev: contains device files.
• Ø /tmp: Refers to the temporary files.  Programs running after botup should use /var/tmp.not/tmp because of its size. Often/tmp will be a symbolic link to /var/tmp.
• Ø /mnt:Regers to mount point for temporary mounts by the system administractor.

Using File System Commands

• Ø Is: Lists files and directories, which are present in Linus operating system as wll as those created by the user.
• Ø Cp: Use to copy files.
• Ø rm: Use to remove files.
• Ø Chown: use to change file ownership
• Ø Chgrp: use to change group permission
• Ø Chmod: use to change files and directory permission

Perform Basic File Management

i.             Filesystem Objects

·        A file is used to store data.  System treats a file simply a sequence of bytes

·        A directory is a collection of files and other directories

·        Directories are organized in a hierarchy, with the root directory at the top

·        The root directory is referred to as /

ii.            Directory and File Names

·        Files and directories are organized into a filesystem

·        User can refer to files in directories and sub-directories by separating their names with/, for example:

/bin/ls

/usrdict/words

/home/venky/recipe

        Paths to files either start from / (absolute) symbol or from some current directory

iii.          File Extensions

·        A filename always has an extension, beginning with a dot.

·        An extension indicates the type of the file.

·        On Unix and Linux, file extensions are entirely a matter of converntion, the operating system itself ignores them.

·        Only a few specific programs use extensions to identify the type of a file.


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Basic File Extensions