UNIX - FILE SYSTEM BASICS

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A file system is a logical collection of files on a partition or disk. A partition is a container for
information and can span an entire hard drive if desired.
Your hard drive can have various partitions which usually contains only one file system, such as
one file system housing the / file system or another containing the /home file system.
One file system per partition allows for the logical maintenance and management of differing file
systems.
Everything in Unix is considered to be a file, including physical devices such as DVD-ROMs, USB
devices, floppy drives, and so forth.

Directory Structure
Unix uses a hierarchical file system structure, much like an upside-down tree, with root / at the
base of the file system and all other directories spreading from there.
A UNIX filesystem is a collection of files and directories that has the following properties
It has a root directory / that contains other files and directories.
Each file or directory is uniquely identified by its name, the directory in which it resides, and
a unique identifier, typically called an inode.
By convention, the root directory has an inode number of 2 and the lost+found directory has
an inode number of 3. Inode numbers 0 and 1 are not used. File inode numbers can be seen
by specifying the -i option to ls command.
It is self contained. There are no dependencies between one filesystem and any other.
The directories have specific purposes and generally hold the same types of information for easily
locating files. Following are the directories that exist on the major versions of Unix
Directory

Description

This is the root directory which should contain only the directories needed at the
top level of the file structure.

/bin

This is where the executable files are located. They are available to all user.

/dev

These are device drivers.

/etc

Supervisor directory commands, configuration files, disk configuration files, valid

user lists, groups, ethernet, hosts, where to send critical messages.

/lib

Contains shared library files and sometimes other kernel-related files.

/boot

Contains files for booting the system.

/home

Contains the home directory for users and other accounts.

/mnt

Used to mount other temporary file systems, such as cdrom and floppy for the
CD-ROM drive and floppy diskette drive, respectively

/proc

Contains all processes marked as a file by process number or other information

that is dynamic to the system.

/tmp

Holds temporary files used between system boots

/usr

Used for miscellaneous purposes, or can be used by many users. Includes

administrative commands, shared files, library files, and others

/var

Typically contains variable-length files such as log and print files and any other
type of file that may contain a variable amount of data

/sbin

Contains binary executable files, usually for system administration. For example
fdisk and ifconfig utlities.

/kernel

Contains kernel files

Navigating the File System

Now that you understand the basics of the file system, you can begin navigating to the files you
need. The following are commands you'll use to navigate the system
Command

Description

cat filename

Displays a filename.

cd dirname

Moves you to the directory identified.

cp file1 file2

Copies one file/directory to specified location.

file filename

Identifies the file type binary, text, etc.

find filename dir

Finds a file/directory.

head filename

Shows the beginning of a file.

less filename

Browses through a file from end or beginning.

ls dirname

Shows the contents of the directory specified.

mkdir dirname

Creates the specified directory.

more filename

Browses through a file from beginning to end.

mv file1 file2

Moves the location of or renames a file/directory.

pwd

Shows the current directory the user is in.

rm filename

Removes a file.

rmdir dirname

Removes a directory.

tail filename

Shows the end of a file.

touch filename

Creates a blank file or modifies an existing file.s attributes.

whereis filename

Shows the location of a file.

which filename

Shows the location of a file if it is in your PATH.

You can use Manpage Help to check complete syntax for each command mentioned here.

The df Command
The first way to manage your partition space is with the df diskfree command. The command df -k
diskfree displays the disk space usage in kilobytes, as shown below
$df -k
Filesystem
/dev/vzfs
/devices
$

1K-blocks
10485760
0

Used
7836644
0

Available Use% Mounted on

2649116 75% /
0
0% /devices

Some of the directories, such as /devices, shows 0 in the kbytes, used, and avail columns as well as
0% for capacity. These are special orvirtual file systems, and although they reside on the disk under
/, by themselves they do not take up disk space.
The df -k output is generally the same on all Unix systems. Here's what it usually includes
Column

Description

Filesystem

The physical file system name.

kbytes

Total kilobytes of space available on the storage

medium.

used

Total kilobytes of space used byfiles.

avail

Total kilobytes available for use.

capacity

Percentage of total space used by files.

Mounted on

What the file system is mounted on.

You can use the -h humanreadable option to display the output in a format that shows the size in
easier-to-understand notation.

The du Command
The du diskusage command enables you to specify directories to show disk space usage on a
particular directory.
This command is helpful if you want to determine how much space a particular directory is taking.
Following command would display number of blocks consumed by each directory. A single block
may take either 512 Bytes or 1 Kilo Byte depending on your system.
$du /etc
10
/etc/cron.d
126
/etc/default
6
/etc/dfs
...
$

The -h option makes the output easier to comprehend

$du -h /etc
5k
/etc/cron.d
63k
/etc/default
3k
/etc/dfs
...
$

Mounting the File System

A file system must be mounted in order to be usable by the system. To see what is currently
mounted availableforuse on your system, use this command
$ mount
/dev/vzfs on / type reiserfs (rw,usrquota,grpquota)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nodiratime)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw)
$

The /mnt directory, by Unix convention, is where temporary mounts

suchasCD ROMdrives, remotenetworkdrives, andfloppydrives are located. If you need to mount a file system,
you can use the mount command with the following syntax

mount -t file_system_type device_to_mount directory_to_mount_to

For example, if you want to mount a CD-ROM to the directory /mnt/cdrom, for example, you can
type
$ mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

This assumes that your CD-ROM device is called /dev/cdrom and that you want to mount it to
/mnt/cdrom. Refer to the mount man page for more specific information or type mount -h at the
command line for help information.
After mounting, you can use the cd command to navigate the newly available file system through
the mountpoint you just made.

Unmounting the File System

To unmount remove the file system from your system, use the umount command by identifying the
mountpoint or device
For example, to unmount cdrom, use the following command
$ umount /dev/cdrom

The mount command enables you to access your file systems, but on most modern Unix systems,
the automount function makes this process invisible to the user and requires no intervention.

User and Group Quotas

User and group quotas provide the mechanisms by which the amount of space used by a single
user or all users within a specific group can be limited to a value defined by the administrator.
Quotas operate around two limits that allow the user to take some action if the amount of space or
number of disk blocks start to exceed the administrator defined limits
Soft Limit If the user exceeds the limit defined, there is a grace period that allows the
user to free up some space.
Hard Limit When the hard limit is reached, regardless of the grace period, no further files
or blocks can be allocated.
There are a number of commands to administer quotas
Command

Description

quota

Displays disk usage and limits for a user of group.

edquota

This is a quota editor. Users or Groups quota can be edited using this
command.

quotacheck

Scan a filesystem for disk usage, create, check and repair quota files

setquota

This is also a command line quota editor.

quotaon

This announces to the system that disk quotas should be enabled on

one or more filesystems.

quotaoff

This announces to the system that disk quotas should be disabled off
one or more filesystems.

repquota

This prints a summary of the disc usage and quotas for the specified
file systems

You can use Manpage Help to check complete syntax for each command mentioned here.
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