CentOS Linux Server Guide

CentOS Linux Files and Directories

CentOS Linux Directories

 

Directories are folders created under file system.

 

The easiest way to compare both structure is to run "tree" command at both MS Windows and CentOS Linux,

you will notice that MS Windows start it root(top) directory is C:\ while for Linux is \ (the following shows . means current directory). Example below, I am do a level tree listing "tree -L 1".

 
tree -L 1
.
|-- bin
|-- boot
|-- dev
|-- etc
|-- home
|-- lib
|-- lost+found
|-- media
|-- misc
|-- mnt
|-- net
|-- opt
|-- proc
|-- root
|-- sbin
|-- selinux
|-- srv
|-- sys
|-- tmp
|-- usr
`-- var

 

 

Going to explain each File and Directory is very tedious and boring job, I will only explain a few important directories
Directory Description
boot It contains all the information and configuration that Linux use for boot up
dev Linux consider hardware as files, it will stored here
lib the library files, like MS Windows's system32's dll
sbin root's command is stored here
tmp temporary files storage
media all cdrom, dvd, usb is connected here
home user home directory
root root's home directory
var store various information such as logs, mail spool. A very busy and dynamic directory
lost+found stores recovered files from after scandisk check if the system was crashed

 

 

How do we do we identify the system listing a file or directory?

Look for the first character of the first column of it start with "d". In our example, we have "." , ".." and "myDir" are the directory. However, please take note that "." and ".." is not a folder. This special symbol "." represent the current folder and ".." represent the parent folder.

 

ls -la

total 56
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Nov 28 11:49 .
drwxr-xr-x 25 root root 4096 Nov 28 11:14 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 28 10:01 A.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 28 10:55 .hiddenfile
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 28 11:49 myDir
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16 Nov 28 11:17 My Work
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13 Nov 28 11:19 My Work Linux
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14 Nov 28 11:21 My Work of Centos

 

 

 

How we only list for directories?

In this example we are listing ("ls") the any folder (using wildcard *). Now we have correct answer : myDir, which have no files in side (total 0)

 

ls -l * d/

ls: d/: No such file or directory
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Nov 28 10:01 A.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16 Nov 28 11:17 My Work
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13 Nov 28 11:19 My Work Linux
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 14 Nov 28 11:21 My Work of Centos

myDir:
total 0

 

 

 

Special directory symbols
Symbols Descriptions
/  root directory
.  current directory
..  parent directory
~  user home directory

 

 

Working with directories

Based on above table we perform some test here. The below example shows the path that we manipulated using above special directory symbols tables.

 
[root@srv1 demo]# ls .
A.txt myDir My Work My Work Linux My Work of Centos


[root@srv1 demo]#
ls ..
bin boot demo dev dvd etc home lib lost+found media misc mnt net opt proc root sbin selinux srv sys tmp usr var


[root@srv1 demo]#
cd ~
[root@srv1 ~]# pwd
/root


[root@srv1 ~]#
cd /
[root@srv1 /]# pwd
/
 

[root@srv1 /]#
 

 

 

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