Chapter 1. File System Structure

19

1.2.1.6. The

/proc

Directory

The

/proc

directory contains special "files" that either extract information from or send information

to the kernel.

Due to the great variety of data available within

/proc

and the many ways this directory can be

used to communicate with the kernel, an entire chapter has been devoted to the subject. For more

information, please see Chapter 2.

1.2.1.7. The

/sbin

Directory

The

/sbin

directory is for executables used only by the root user. The executables in

/sbin

are only

used to boot and mount

/usr

and perform system recovery operations. The FHS says:

"/sbin typically contains files essential for booting the system in addition to the binaries in /bin. Anything

executed after /usr is known to be mounted (when there are no problems) should be placed in /usr/sbin.

Local only system administration binaries should be placed into /usr/local/sbin."

At a minimum, the following programs should be in

/sbin

:

arp

,

clock

,

getty

,

halt

,

init

,

fdisk

,

fsck.*

,

grub

,

ifconfig

,

lilo

,

mkfs.*

,

mkswap

,

reboot

,

route

,

shutdown

,

swapoff

,

swapon

,

update

1.2.1.8. The

/usr

Directory

The

/usr

directory is for files that can be shared across a whole site. The

/usr

directory usually has

its own partition, and it should be mountable read only. At minimum, the following directories should

be subdirectories of

/usr

:

/usr

|  bin

|  dict

|  doc

|  etc

|  games

|  include

|  kerberos

|  lib

|  libexec

|  local

|  sbin

|  share

|  src

|  tmp  > ../var/tmp

|  X11R6

The

bin

directory contains executables,

dict

contains non FHS compliant documentation pages,

etc

contains system wide configuration files,

games

is for games,

include

contains C header files,

kerberos

contains binaries and much more for Kerberos, and

lib

contains object files and libraries