Linux file system

administration

Linux organizes its files differently from

Windows
First the directory structure may seem
unlogical and strange and you have no idea
where all the programs, icons, config files, and
others are.
There are two types of Linux's directory
structure: full/absolute path and relative path

When you request to open or save a file,

your shell uses the current directory as the

point of reference.
Simply provide a filename when you save a
file, and it is placed in the current directory.
Alternatively, you can identify a file by its
relation to the current directory (relative
path), or you can ignore the current
directory and identify a file by the full
directory hierarchy that locates it (absolute
path/full path).

File systems are organized differently in Linux

than they are in Microsoft Windows operating

systems.
Instead of drive letters (for example, A:, B:, C:)
for each local disk, network file system, CDROM, or other type of storage medium,
everything fits neatly into the directory
structure.
Some drives are connected (mounted)
automatically into the file system. For example,
a CD might be mounted on /media/cdrom. If the
drive isnt mounted automatically, it is up to an
administrator to create a mount point in the file
system and then connect the disk to that point.

Although similar in many ways, the Linux file

system has some striking differences from

file systems used in MS-DOS and Windows
operating systems. Here are a few:
In MS-DOS and Windows file systems, drive

letters represent different storage devices (for

example, A: is a floppy drive and C: is a hard
disk). In Linux, all storage devices are fit into the
file system hierarchy. So, the fact that all of /usr
may be on a separate hard disk or that /mnt/rem1
is a file system from another computer is invisible
to the user.

 Slashes, rather than backslashes, are used to

separate directory names in Linux. So,

C:\home\izwan in an MS system is /home/izwan
in a Linux system.
Every file and directory in a Linux system has
permissions and ownership associated with it.
Security varies among Microsoft systems.
Because DOS and MS Windows began as singleuser systems, file ownership was not built into
those systems when they were designed. Later
releases added features such as file and folder
attributes to address this problem.

 Filenames almost always have suffixes in DOS

(such as .txt for text files or .doc for

wordprocessing files). Although at times you
can use that convention in Linux, threecharacter suffixes have no required meaning in
Linux. They can be useful for identifying a file
type.
Many Linux applications and desktop
environments use file suffixes to determine the
contents of a file. In Linux, however, DOS
command extensions such as .com, .exe, and
.bat dont necessarily signify an executable
(permission flags make Linux files executable).

The Linux file system is organized as a

hierarchy of directories.

/binContains common Linux user

commands, such as ls, sort, date, and chmod.

/devContains files representing access
points to devices on your systems. These
include terminal devices (tty*), floppy disks
(fd*), hard disks (hd*), RAM (ram*), and CDROM (cd*). (Users normally access these
devices directly through the device files.)
/etcContains administrative configuration
files.

/homeContains directories assigned to

each user with a login account (with the

exception of root).
/lib The shared libraries for programs that
are dynamically linked. The shared libraries
are similar to DLL's on Winblows.
/mntA common mount point for many
devices before it was supplanted by the
standard /media directory. Some bootable
Linux systems still used this directory to
mount hard disk partitions and remote file
systems.

/procContains information about system

resources.
/rootRepresents the root users home
directory. The home directory for root does not
reside beneath /home for security reasons.
/sbinContains administrative commands and
daemon processes.

/tmpContains temporary files used by

applications.
/usrContains user documentation, games,
graphical files (X11), libraries (lib), and a variety
of other user and administrative commands and
files.
/varContains directories of data used by
various applications. In particular, this is where
you would place files that you share as an FTP
server (/var/ftp) or a Web server (/var/www). It
also contains all system log files (/var/log) and
spool files in /var/spool (such as mail, cups, and
news).

ls - List the contents of a directory.

ps - see which programs are running, the

resources they are using, and who is running

them.
usermod - to modify settings for an existing
account
id - To find out information about your identity,

who - You can see information about your current

login session
echo To find out the name of your home
directory,
pwd - To find out what your current directory (the
present working directory)
cd - To get back to your home directory, just type
the change directory (cd) command. (Although
cd followed by a directory name changes the
current directory to the directory that you
choose, simply typing cd with no directory name
takes you to your home directory.)

df - display the space available in your file

systems
du - To find out how much space is being
consumed by a particular directory (and its
subdirectories)
man - To learn more about a particular
command, type man command. (Replace
command with the command name you want.)
A description of the command and its options
appears on the screen.
You also can always see other option for every
command by typing command --help, e.g. ls
--help

chmod - Change the permissions on a file

or directory. The format is chmod

permissions filename
chown - to change the owner of a file or
directory The format is chown newowner
filename
chgrp - to change the group that has
access to files and directories. The format
is chgrp newgroup filename(s) [options]

Here are some examples of how to change

permissions on a file (named file) and what

the resulting permission would be:
# chmod 777 file rwxrwxrwx
# chmod 755 file rwxr-xr-x
# chmod 644 file rw-r--r# chmod 000 file ---------

chmod
> ls -l

-rwxr--r-- 1 root root 765 Apr 23 09:22

file.txt
> chmod 755 file.txt
The permissions are the first 10 characters
of the line (-rwxrwx---) and can be broken
down as follows.

The r,w and x stand for: r = read,w = write

x = execute
The first character on the line shows what
type of file or directory it is, and can be one
of these things...
- = file
d = directory
l = symbolic link
b = block-type special file
c = character-type special file
p = named pipe
S = socket
s = XENIX semaphore
m = XENIX shared data (memory) file
D = Solaris door
n = HP-UX network special file

The remaining 9 characters are broken down

into 3 groups of 3 characters. The first three

are the permissions for the owner, the middle
three are permissions for the group which has
access to the file and the last three are the
permissions for everybody else.

chown
> chown izwan file.txt
This will cause file.txt to now be owned by

izwan.

 chgrp
>ls -l

-rwxrwx--- 1 izwan grup 35 Jun 13 21:14 file.txt

>chgrp kumpulan file.txt
>ls -l
-rwxrwx--- 1 izwan kumpulan 35 Jun 13 21:14
file.txt
>
Line 1 is the list command (ls), with long format
Line 2 is the output of ls, showing there is one
file, called file.txt (owned by izwan', group
access for group grup')
Line 3 is the chgrp command, with the new
group name being kumpulan
Line 4 is the ls command again, to show us if
the chgrp command was successful
Line 5 shows that the file is owned by izwan, but
now group access is kumpulan'

mv - Move files to directory / Move or rename

files.
E.g.
mv file1 file3 rename file1 to file3
mv file3 home/user/directory move file 3 into

directory

cp - Copy files
cp source destination
E.g. cp files1 files2
Copy file1 as file2 in same directory

E.g. cp files1 files2 home/user/directory

Copy files1 and files2 to other directory

rm Remove (delete) files.

You must own the file in order to be able to

remove it. On many systems, you will be asked

or confirmation of deleation, if you don't want
this, use the "-f" (=force) option, e.g., rm -f *
will remove all files in my current working
directory, no questions asked.
E.g. rm file1

rmdir - Remove an empty directory.

rm directory
rm -r files - (recursive remove) Remove files,

directories, and their subdirectories. Careful

with this command as root--you can easily
remove all files on the system with such a
command executed on the top of your directory
tree, and there is no undelete in Linux (yet).

find finding files

E.g. find filename

Find the file called "filename" on your

filesystem starting the search from the root
directory "/". The "filename" may contain
wildcards (*,?).
locate finding files.
E.g. locate filename
Find the file name of which contains the string

"filename".

which locate a command e.g which ls,

the output would be /bin/ls etc..

 head print the first 10 lines of each file to

standard output
tail - print the last 10 lines of each file to standard
output
cat concatenate (combine) files and print on the
standard output
tac - write each file to standard output, last line
first. With no file or file is -, read standard output
more filter for paging through text one screenful
at a time. This version is especially primitive
less opposite of more

 Usually when you want to install applications or

software, we can use a DEB (Debian software

package )or RPM (RPM Package Management for
Red Hat) packages.
Software not available in .DEB or RPM format can
often be installed from installer scripts (.sh) or by
compiling source code from a tarball.
A tarball is an archive of files createdwith a special
utility (named tar) and usually compressed using
another utility, gzip. Source code distributions are
often packaged as gzipped tarballs. Compiling from
source enables you to do things the old way if
needed and to exercise granular control of
unpackaged software.

tar.bz2
tar.gz
Uncompress tarball
# 1: Uncompress tarball
To uncompress them, execute the following

command(s) depending on the extension:

$ tar zxf file.tar.gz

$ tar zxf file.tgz
$ tar jxf file.tar.bz2
$ tar jxf file.tbz2

Now change directory

$ ls
$ cd path-to-software/
# 2: Build and install software
Generally you need to type 3 commands as

follows for building and compiling software:

# ./configure
# make
# make install

Where,
./configure will configure the software to
ensure your system has the necessary
functionality and libraries to successfully
compile the package
make will compile all the source files into
executable binaries.
Finally, make install will install the binaries
and any supporting files into the
appropriate locations.

# 3: Read INSTALL / README file

Each tarball comes with installation and build

instructions. Open INSTALL or README file for

more information:

$ vi INSTALL