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hier(7) Miscellaneous Information Manual hier(7)
hier - description of the filesystem hierarchy
A typical Linux system has, among others, the following
directories:
/ This is the root directory. This is where the whole tree
starts.
/bin This directory contains executable programs which are
needed in single user mode and to bring the system up or
repair it.
/boot Contains static files for the boot loader. This directory
holds only the files which are needed during the boot
process. The map installer and configuration files should
go to /sbin and /etc. The operating system kernel (initrd
for example) must be located in either / or /boot.
/dev Special or device files, which refer to physical devices.
See mknod(1).
/etc Contains configuration files which are local to the
machine. Some larger software packages, like X11, can
have their own subdirectories below /etc. Site-wide
configuration files may be placed here or in /usr/etc.
Nevertheless, programs should always look for these files
in /etc and you may have links for these files to
/usr/etc.
/etc/opt
Host-specific configuration files for add-on applications
installed in /opt.
/etc/sgml
This directory contains the configuration files for SGML
(optional).
/etc/skel
When a new user account is created, files from this
directory are usually copied into the user's home
directory.
/etc/X11
Configuration files for the X11 window system (optional).
/etc/xml
This directory contains the configuration files for XML
(optional).
/home On machines with home directories for users, these are
usually beneath this directory, directly or not. The
structure of this directory depends on local
administration decisions (optional).
/lib This directory should hold those shared libraries that are
necessary to boot the system and to run the commands in
the root filesystem.
/lib<qual>
These directories are variants of /lib on system which
support more than one binary format requiring separate
libraries (optional).
/lib/modules
Loadable kernel modules (optional).
/lost+found
This directory contains items lost in the filesystem.
These items are usually chunks of files mangled as a
consequence of a faulty disk or a system crash.
/media This directory contains mount points for removable media
such as CD and DVD disks or USB sticks. On systems where
more than one device exists for mounting a certain type of
media, mount directories can be created by appending a
digit to the name of those available above starting with
'0', but the unqualified name must also exist.
/media/floppy[1-9]
Floppy drive (optional).
/media/cdrom[1-9]
CD-ROM drive (optional).
/media/cdrecorder[1-9]
CD writer (optional).
/media/zip[1-9]
Zip drive (optional).
/media/usb[1-9]
USB drive (optional).
/mnt This directory is a mount point for a temporarily mounted
filesystem. In some distributions, /mnt contains
subdirectories intended to be used as mount points for
several temporary filesystems.
/opt This directory should contain add-on packages that contain
static files.
/proc This is a mount point for the proc filesystem, which
provides information about running processes and the
kernel. This pseudo-filesystem is described in more
detail in proc(5).
/root This directory is usually the home directory for the root
user (optional).
/run This directory contains information which describes the
system since it was booted. Once this purpose was served
by /var/run and programs may continue to use it.
/sbin Like /bin, this directory holds commands needed to boot
the system, but which are usually not executed by normal
users.
/srv This directory contains site-specific data that is served
by this system.
/sys This is a mount point for the sysfs filesystem, which
provides information about the kernel like /proc, but
better structured, following the formalism of kobject
infrastructure.
/tmp This directory contains temporary files which may be
deleted with no notice, such as by a regular job or at
system boot up.
/usr This directory is usually mounted from a separate
partition. It should hold only shareable, read-only data,
so that it can be mounted by various machines running
Linux.
/usr/X11R6
The X-Window system, version 11 release 6 (present in FHS
2.3, removed in FHS 3.0).
/usr/X11R6/bin
Binaries which belong to the X-Window system; often, there
is a symbolic link from the more traditional /usr/bin/X11
to here.
/usr/X11R6/lib
Data files associated with the X-Window system.
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11
These contain miscellaneous files needed to run X; Often,
there is a symbolic link from /usr/lib/X11 to this
directory.
/usr/X11R6/include/X11
Contains include files needed for compiling programs using
the X11 window system. Often, there is a symbolic link
from /usr/include/X11 to this directory.
/usr/bin
This is the primary directory for executable programs.
Most programs executed by normal users which are not
needed for booting or for repairing the system and which
are not installed locally should be placed in this
directory.
/usr/bin/mh
Commands for the MH mail handling system (optional).
/usr/bin/X11
This is the traditional place to look for X11 executables;
on Linux, it usually is a symbolic link to /usr/X11R6/bin.
/usr/dict
Replaced by /usr/share/dict.
/usr/doc
Replaced by /usr/share/doc.
/usr/etc
Site-wide configuration files to be shared between several
machines may be stored in this directory. However,
commands should always reference those files using the
/etc directory. Links from files in /etc should point to
the appropriate files in /usr/etc.
/usr/games
Binaries for games and educational programs (optional).
/usr/include
Include files for the C compiler.
/usr/include/bsd
BSD compatibility include files (optional).
/usr/include/X11
Include files for the C compiler and the X-Window system.
This is usually a symbolic link to /usr/X11R6/include/X11.
/usr/include/asm
Include files which declare some assembler functions.
This used to be a symbolic link to
/usr/src/linux/include/asm.
/usr/include/linux
This contains information which may change from system
release to system release and used to be a symbolic link
to /usr/src/linux/include/linux to get at operating-
system-specific information.
(Note that one should have include files there that work
correctly with the current libc and in user space.
However, Linux kernel source is not designed to be used
with user programs and does not know anything about the
libc you are using. It is very likely that things will
break if you let /usr/include/asm and /usr/include/linux
point at a random kernel tree. Debian systems don't do
this and use headers from a known good kernel version,
provided in the libc*-dev package.)
/usr/include/g++
Include files to use with the GNU C++ compiler.
/usr/lib
Object libraries, including dynamic libraries, plus some
executables which usually are not invoked directly. More
complicated programs may have whole subdirectories there.
/usr/libexec
Directory contains binaries for internal use only and they
are not meant to be executed directly by users shell or
scripts.
/usr/lib<qual>
These directories are variants of /usr/lib on system which
support more than one binary format requiring separate
libraries, except that the symbolic link /usr/libqual/X11
is not required (optional).
/usr/lib/X11
The usual place for data files associated with X programs,
and configuration files for the X system itself. On
Linux, it usually is a symbolic link to
/usr/X11R6/lib/X11.
/usr/lib/gcc-lib
contains executables and include files for the GNU C
compiler, gcc(1).
/usr/lib/groff
Files for the GNU groff document formatting system.
/usr/lib/uucp
Files for uucp(1).
/usr/local
This is where programs which are local to the site
typically go.
/usr/local/bin
Binaries for programs local to the site.
/usr/local/doc
Local documentation.
/usr/local/etc
Configuration files associated with locally installed
programs.
/usr/local/games
Binaries for locally installed games.
/usr/local/lib
Files associated with locally installed programs.
/usr/local/lib<qual>
These directories are variants of /usr/local/lib on system
which support more than one binary format requiring
separate libraries (optional).
/usr/local/include
Header files for the local C compiler.
/usr/local/info
Info pages associated with locally installed programs.
/usr/local/man
Man pages associated with locally installed programs.
/usr/local/sbin
Locally installed programs for system administration.
/usr/local/share
Local application data that can be shared among different
architectures of the same OS.
/usr/local/src
Source code for locally installed software.
/usr/man
Replaced by /usr/share/man.
/usr/sbin
This directory contains program binaries for system
administration which are not essential for the boot
process, for mounting /usr, or for system repair.
/usr/share
This directory contains subdirectories with specific
application data, that can be shared among different
architectures of the same OS. Often one finds stuff here
that used to live in /usr/doc or /usr/lib or /usr/man.
/usr/share/color
Contains color management information, like International
Color Consortium (ICC) Color profiles (optional).
/usr/share/dict
Contains the word lists used by spell checkers (optional).
/usr/share/dict/words
List of English words (optional).
/usr/share/doc
Documentation about installed programs (optional).
/usr/share/games
Static data files for games in /usr/games (optional).
/usr/share/info
Info pages go here (optional).
/usr/share/locale
Locale information goes here (optional).
/usr/share/man
Manual pages go here in subdirectories according to the
man page sections.
/usr/share/man/locale/man[1-9]
These directories contain manual pages for the specific
locale in source code form. Systems which use a unique
language and code set for all manual pages may omit the
<locale> substring.
/usr/share/misc
Miscellaneous data that can be shared among different
architectures of the same OS.
/usr/share/nls
The message catalogs for native language support go here
(optional).
/usr/share/ppd
Postscript Printer Definition (PPD) files (optional).
/usr/share/sgml
Files for SGML (optional).
/usr/share/sgml/docbook
DocBook DTD (optional).
/usr/share/sgml/tei
TEI DTD (optional).
/usr/share/sgml/html
HTML DTD (optional).
/usr/share/sgml/mathml
MathML DTD (optional).
/usr/share/terminfo
The database for terminfo (optional).
/usr/share/tmac
Troff macros that are not distributed with groff
(optional).
/usr/share/xml
Files for XML (optional).
/usr/share/xml/docbook
DocBook DTD (optional).
/usr/share/xml/xhtml
XHTML DTD (optional).
/usr/share/xml/mathml
MathML DTD (optional).
/usr/share/zoneinfo
Files for timezone information (optional).
/usr/src
Source files for different parts of the system, included
with some packages for reference purposes. Don't work
here with your own projects, as files below /usr should be
read-only except when installing software (optional).
/usr/src/linux
This was the traditional place for the kernel source.
Some distributions put here the source for the default
kernel they ship. You should probably use another
directory when building your own kernel.
/usr/tmp
Obsolete. This should be a link to /var/tmp. This link
is present only for compatibility reasons and shouldn't be
used.
/var This directory contains files which may change in size,
such as spool and log files.
/var/account
Process accounting logs (optional).
/var/adm
This directory is superseded by /var/log and should be a
symbolic link to /var/log.
/var/backups
Reserved for historical reasons.
/var/cache
Data cached for programs.
/var/cache/fonts
Locally generated fonts (optional).
/var/cache/man
Locally formatted man pages (optional).
/var/cache/www
WWW proxy or cache data (optional).
/var/cache/<package>
Package specific cache data (optional).
/var/catman/cat[1-9] or /var/cache/man/cat[1-9]
These directories contain preformatted manual pages
according to their man page section. (The use of
preformatted manual pages is deprecated.)
/var/crash
System crash dumps (optional).
/var/cron
Reserved for historical reasons.
/var/games
Variable game data (optional).
/var/lib
Variable state information for programs.
/var/lib/color
Variable files containing color management information
(optional).
/var/lib/hwclock
State directory for hwclock (optional).
/var/lib/misc
Miscellaneous state data.
/var/lib/xdm
X display manager variable data (optional).
/var/lib/<editor>
Editor backup files and state (optional).
/var/lib/<name>
These directories must be used for all distribution
packaging support.
/var/lib/<package>
State data for packages and subsystems (optional).
/var/lib/<pkgtool>
Packaging support files (optional).
/var/local
Variable data for /usr/local.
/var/lock
Lock files are placed in this directory. The naming
convention for device lock files is LCK..<device> where
<device> is the device's name in the filesystem. The
format used is that of HDU UUCP lock files, that is, lock
files contain a PID as a 10-byte ASCII decimal number,
followed by a newline character.
/var/log
Miscellaneous log files.
/var/opt
Variable data for /opt.
/var/mail
Users' mailboxes. Replaces /var/spool/mail.
/var/msgs
Reserved for historical reasons.
/var/preserve
Reserved for historical reasons.
/var/run
Run-time variable files, like files holding process
identifiers (PIDs) and logged user information (utmp).
Files in this directory are usually cleared when the
system boots.
/var/spool
Spooled (or queued) files for various programs.
/var/spool/at
Spooled jobs for at(1).
/var/spool/cron
Spooled jobs for cron(8).
/var/spool/lpd
Spooled files for printing (optional).
/var/spool/lpd/printer
Spools for a specific printer (optional).
/var/spool/mail
Replaced by /var/mail.
/var/spool/mqueue
Queued outgoing mail (optional).
/var/spool/news
Spool directory for news (optional).
/var/spool/rwho
Spooled files for rwhod(8) (optional).
/var/spool/smail
Spooled files for the smail(1) mail delivery program.
/var/spool/uucp
Spooled files for uucp(1) (optional).
/var/tmp
Like /tmp, this directory holds temporary files stored for
an unspecified duration.
/var/yp
Database files for NIS, formerly known as the Sun Yellow
Pages (YP).
The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS), Version 3.0
⟨https://refspecs.linuxfoundation.org/fhs.shtml⟩, published March
19, 2015
This list is not exhaustive; different distributions and systems
may be configured differently.
find(1), ln(1), proc(5), file-hierarchy(7), mount(8)
The Filesystem Hierarchy Standard
This page is part of the man-pages (Linux kernel and C library
user-space interface documentation) project. Information about
the project can be found at
⟨https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/docs/man-pages/man-pages.git/tree/CONTRIBUTING⟩.
This page was obtained from the tarball man-pages-6.9.1.tar.gz
fetched from
⟨https://mirrors.edge.kernel.org/pub/linux/docs/man-pages/⟩ on
2024-06-26. If you discover any rendering problems in this HTML
version of the page, or you believe there is a better or more up-
to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not
part of the original manual page), send a mail to
[email protected]
Linux man-pages 6.9.1 2024-05-02 hier(7)
Pages that refer to this page: proc(5), file-hierarchy(7)
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HTML rendering created 2024-06-26 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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