Unix tradition

Cantab.

What do 'bin', 'etc', 'var', 'lib', 'proc', 'sbin', 'dev', etc. mean?

Where should I install programs?

ethernet

Let the package manager worry about that! Even if you do install from source, you rarely need to alter the defaults.

I'll *try* and explain!

• bin is the place for some binaries that all users can use
• etc is home to many configuration files
• var is home to printer spooling, log files and other stuff
• lib is where most libraries live
• proc provides system info to other parts of the system
• sbin is where programs only the root user/a user with sudo access can execute
• dev contains devices (/dev/sda1 is the first SATA drive, for example)

Needless to say, there are a lot better explanations than this online.

An Fear Aniar

Nice simple explanation here (which I should read myself):

http://www.freeos.com/articles/3102/

Some pretty pictures of it here:

Google Image


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Cantab.

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

Nice simple explanation here (which I should read myself):

http://www.freeos.com/articles/3102/

Some pretty pictures of it here:

Google Image


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Thanks for that.

I found it very hard to search for this kind of stuff on google.

If you type "var bin etc proc..." into google, you just get a load of pages with unix addresses...

smeg_for_brains

You may also want to check out:
http://tldp.org/LDP/intro-linux/html/sect_03_01.html

which is a page from an online guide. When you are finished with this page, go to the bottom and click on "home" to go to the contents page of this Linux Guide

KAGY

You forgot to mention /usr; it took me ages to find out that it is an acronym for unix system resources not "user". This is the place a lot of programs install to.
If you are just setting up your system google for info on what partitions to make. One of the best advice I got was to keep your home folder in a different partition. That way you can do a clean update by formatting the rest of the file system.
If you are going to use a database like postgresql you might want to but /var on it's own partition too.

karlr42

KAGY wrote: »

You forgot to mention /usr; it took me ages to find out that it is an acronym for unix system resources not "user".

Had no idea of that, thank you.

An Fear Aniar

KAGY wrote: »

You forgot to mention /usr; it took me ages to find out that it is an acronym for unix system resources not "user". This is the place a lot of programs install to.

Was not aware of that either.

I also found out just recently, if you play a Youtube video, it stores a copy in /tmp until you close down your browser. It's a handy way to grab downloads, just copy them out of /tmp.


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Cantab.

Came across this great article on delicious:

http://tuxradar.com/content/take-linux-filesystem-tour/

Orion

An Fear Aniar wrote: »

I also found out just recently, if you play a Youtube video, it stores a copy in /tmp until you close down your browser. It's a handy way to grab downloads, just copy them out of /tmp.
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That's a handy one alright. I've used it too.

and +1 to KAGY's suggestion - put /home on its own partition. When I first built a linux system I didn't - next time I did. Now I can change my distro/reinstall from scratch without losing any data.