Hi, I am very new to linux, could someone give me some clue as to what /usr and the rest of them are for i.e. /etc /usr/ /bin /lib and the other diretories on their. Can anyone help???? Thanks Ian

read up on any unix newbie book

I havn't got one

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I could almost swear this forum was to help people, and not tell them to RTFM. thanks much for the help you all provided. :| Ian, i hope this will help clear things up. 1. originally you had /bin for binaries, /usr for user files (like your home directory), and /etc for other stuff. 2. the users wanted to share binaries, so /usr/bin was created: 'bin' was a dummy user---he's still in the passwd file! Other dummy users were created and became standard. /usr/ucb is the most common: 'ucb' is the University of California at Berkeley, creators of BSD. 3. Eventually (after BSD) the /usr directory contained lots of stuff that people just expected, so we needed somewhere for normal users and optional software packages: /home and /opt were invented, but by different people. /sbin is for binaries required to boot the system that root should use. The 's' is /sbin stands for 'system': these binaries are for sysadmin. /bin is for binaries required to boot the system that normal users should be able to use. Some 'traditional' programs are included in /bin to keep some people happy. /usr/sbin is for binaries that are not required to boot the system but are used for sysadmin stuff. /usr/bin is for any other standard binaries.

also, you may want to look at http://www.freebsd-howto.com/HOWTO/Filesystem-Layout-HOWTO

I just found this post, describing the directory structure. http://www.computing.net/linux/wwwboard/forum/6756.html