Chapter 3

Exploring Linux Filesystems

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ay not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Objectives
• After completing this chapter, you will be able to:
• Understand and navigate the Linux directory structure using relative and
absolute pathnames
• Describe the various types of Linux files
• View filenames and file types
• Use shell wildcards to specify multiple filenames
• Display the contents of text files and binary files
• Search text files for regular expressions using grep
• Use the vi editor to manipulate text files
• Identify common alternatives to the vi text editor used today

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 The Linux Directory Structure (1 of 3)
• Directory
• Used to organize other files into a logical tree structure
• Stored in a filesystem of a specific partition in the hard disk or SSD
• Absolute pathname
• Pathname from the root directory to a certain file or directory
• Root
• Top level directory
• Referred to using /root

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Linux Directory Structure (2 of 3)

Figure 3-1: The Windows filesystem structure

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
The Linux Directory Structure (3 of 3)

Figure 3-2: The Linux filesystem structure

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Changing Directories (1 of 2)
• Home directory
• Unique to each user account
• The ~ metacharacter can be used to refer to home directory
• Print working directory (pwd) command
• Displays current directory in the directory tree
• Change directory (cd) command
• Change the current directory
• Relative pathname
• Pathname of target file or directory relative to current directory

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Changing Directories (2 of 2)
• Parent directory
• Directory one step closer to the root of the tree
• Referred to by two dots (..)
• Subdirectory
• Directory residing within another directory
• Tab-completion
• Pressing the Tab key fills in remaining characters
• BASH shell feature
• Alerts user if there is more than one possible match

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Viewing Files and Directories
• Point of a directory structure
• Organize files into an easy-to-use format
• This sections covers various types of files and filenames
• As well as different commands used to select filenames for viewing

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 File Types
• Text files: contain configuration information
• Binary data files: store information such as common functions
and graphics
• Linked files: files that have an association with one another
• Special device files: files that represent different devices on the
system
• Named pipe files: identify channels that pass information from
one process in memory to another
• Socket files: allow a process on another computer to write to a file
on the local computer while another process reads from that file
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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Filenames
• Filename
• Identifier given to a file
• Up to 255 characters (rarely longer than 20 characters)
• Alphanumeric characters, underscore (_), dash (-), and period (.)
• Filename extensions
• Identifiers following a period (.) at end of filename
• Indicate file type
• Most files on Linux do not have filename extensions

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Listing Files (1 of 3)
• 1s command: displays files in a directory
• 1s –F command appends a special character at the end of each filename
displayed to indicate the type of file
• 1s –l command can be used to provide a long listing for each file in a
certain directory

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Listing Files (2 of 3)
• File components
• File type character
• List of permissions on the file
• Hard link count
• Owner of the file
• Group owner of the file
• File size
• Most recent modification time
• Filename

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Listing Files (3 of 3)
• File command: displays file type of any file
• Argument indicates what file or files to analyze
• Identifies between different types of executable files
• Identifies empty files
• Hidden files: files not normally displayed to user
• Configuration files often hidden
• Filenames start with a dot (.)
• ls –a command: displays hidden files

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Wildcard Metacharacters (1 of 2)
• Simplify commands specifying more than one filename on the
command line
• Can match the entire filename or portions of filenames
• Can be used with most Linux filesystem commands

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Wildcard Metacharacters (2 of 2)

Table 3-3: Wildcard metacharacter

Metacharacter Description

* Matches 0 or more characters in a filename

? Matches 1 character in a filename

[aegh] Matches 1 character in a filename—provided this character

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Displaying the Contents of Text Files (1 of 2)
• Concatenation: view an entire text file on the terminal screen
• The cat command: displays contents of a text file to the screen
• The -n option: displays line number of each line in the file
• Log files: contain records of events
• Most recent events are appended to end of the file
• The tac command: displays contents of a text file in reverse order
• Head command: displays the first ten lines of a file
• Tail command: displays the last ten lines of a file

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Displaying the Contents of Text Files (2 of 2)
• Large text files can not be viewed using the cat command
• Screen will only fit a portion of the file
• The more command: displays text files page-by-page
• The less command: same as more command, but can also use arrow
keys
• The more and less commands can be used with output of other
commands

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Displaying the Contents of Binary Files
• To view contents of binary files, you typically use the program that
created the file
• The strings command: searches for and displays text characters
in a binary file
• Might indicate purpose of binary file
• The od command: displays contents of file in octal format
(numeric base 8 format)
• The -x option displays contents of the file in hexadecimal format (numeric
base 16 format)

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Searching for Text Within Files
• Text tools
• Commands that search for and manipulate text
• Such as database information
• Regular expressions (regexp)
• Text wildcards that ease the search for specific text
• Recognized by several text tools and programming languages

Eckert, Linux+ and LPIC-1 Guide to Linux Certification, 5th Edition. © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May
not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Regular Expressions (1 of 2)
• Different from wildcard metacharacters
• Wildcard metacharacters are interpreted by the shell, whereas regular
expressions are interpreted by a text tool program
• Wildcard metacharacters match characters in filenames (or directory
names) on a Linux filesystem, whereas regular expressions match
characters within text files on a Linux filesystem
• Wildcard metacharacters typically have different definitions than regular
expression metacharacters
• More regular expression metacharacters are available than wildcard
metacharacters

Eckert, Linux+ and LPIC-1 Guide to Linux Certification, 5th Edition. © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May
not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Regular Expressions (2 of 2)
• Regular expressions are divided into two different categories
• Common regular expressions: available to most text tools
• Extended regular expressions: less common and available in only certain
text tools

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 The grep Command (1 of 2)
• The global regular expression print (grep) command: displays
lines in a text file that match common regular expressions
• The egrep command: displays lines in a text file that match
extended regular expressions
• The fgrep command: does not interpret any regular expressions
and returns results much faster

Eckert, Linux+ and LPIC-1 Guide to Linux Certification, 5th Edition. © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May
not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 The grep Command (2 of 2)
• Requires two arguments
• Text to search for
• Files to search
• Case sensitive
• For case-insensitive search, use –i option
• Matches patterns of text
• Unable to discern words or phrases unless they are specified

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Editing Text Files
• Most system configuration is stored in text files
• As is commonly accessed information such as e-mail and program source
code
• Most Linux distributions come with several text editors
• Editors that can be used on the command line
• Editors that can be used in a GUI environment

Eckert, Linux+ and LPIC-1 Guide to Linux Certification, 5th Edition. © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May
not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 The vi Editor (1 of 2)
• One of the oldest and most popular text editors for UNIX OSs
• Linux equivalent of vi: vim
• Standard on most Linux distributions
• Advantage is portability, not usability
• Used on Unix and Linux
• The vi editor supports regular expressions
• Can perform over 1000 different functions for the user

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 The vi Editor (2 of 2)
• The vi editor is called a bi-modal editor
• Command mode: performs text editing tasks not related to inserting text
• Such as deleting text, copying text, saving changes to a file, and exiting the vi editor
• Insert mode: inserts text, but nothing else
• Press the Esc key to return to command mode
• User environment is customizable
• Through settings that can be altered at the : prompt

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Other Common Text Editors (1 of 2)
• GNU Emacs (Editor MACroS) editor: offers comparable
functionality to vi
• Nano editor: text editor that uses Ctrl key combinations for
performing functions
• The gedit editor: graphical text editor functional in a GUI
environment

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not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
Other Common Text Editors (2 of 2)

Figure 3-3: The gedit text editor

Eckert, Linux+ and LPIC-1 Guide to Linux Certification, 5th Edition. © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May
not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Summary (1 of 2)
• The Linux filesystem is arranged hierarchically
• Series of directories store files
• The ls command is used to view filenames
• Wide range of options to modify views
• Wildcard metacharacters are special keyboard characters
• Simplify selection of several files when using common Linux file
commands
• Text files are the most common file type
• Contents can be viewed by several utilities: head, tail, cat, tac, more, and
less

Eckert, Linux+ and LPIC-1 Guide to Linux Certification, 5th Edition. © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May
not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.
 Summary (2 of 2)
• Regular expression metacharacters can be used to specify
certain patterns of text
• Used with certain programming languages and text tool utilities such as
grep
• Although many command-line and graphical text editors exist, vi
(vim) is a powerful, bimodal text editor
• Standard on most UNIX and Linux systems

Eckert, Linux+ and LPIC-1 Guide to Linux Certification, 5th Edition. © 2019 Cengage. All Rights Reserved. May
not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.