Differences across different OS

Question 1

/

Answer 1

The slash / character alone denotes the root of the filesystem tree

Question 2

/bin

Answer 2

Stands for “binaries” and contains certain fundamental utilities, such as ls or cp, which are generally needed by all users.

Question 3

/boot

Answer 3

Contains all the files that are required for successful booting process.

Question 4

/dev

Answer 4

Stands for “devices”. Contains file representations of peripheral devices and pseudo-devices.

Question 5

/etc

Answer 5

Contains system-wide configuration files and system databases. Originally also contained “dangerous maintenance utilities” such as init, but these have typically been moved to /sbin or elsewhere.

Question 6

/home

Answer 6

Contains the home directories for the users.

Question 7

/lib

Answer 7

Contains system libraries, and some critical files such as kernel modules or device drivers.

Question 8

/media

Answer 8

Default mount point for removable devices such as USB sticks, media players, etc.

Question 9

/mnt

Answer 9

Stands for “mount”. Contains filesystem mount points. These are used, for example, if the system uses multiple hard disks or hard disk partitions. It is also often used for remote (network) filesystems, CD-ROM/DVD drives, and so on.

Question 10

/proc

Answer 10

procfs virtual filesystem showing information about processes as files.

Question 11

/root

Answer 11

The home directory for the superuser “root” – that is, the system administrator. This account’s home directory is usually on the initial filesystem, and hence not in /home (which may be a mount point for another filesystem) in case specific maintenance needs to be performed, during which other filesystems are not available. Such a case could occur, for example, if a hard disk drive suffers physical failures and cannot be properly mounted.

Question 12

/tmp

Answer 12

A place for temporary files. Many systems clear this directory upon startup; it might have tmpfs mounted atop it, in which case its contents do not survive a reboot, or it might be explicitly cleared by a startup script at boot time.

Question 13

/usr

Answer 13

Originally the directory holding user home directories,its use has changed. It now holds executables, libraries, and shared resources that are not system critical, like the X Window System, KDE, Perl, etc. However, on some Unix systems, some user accounts may still have a home directory that is a direct subdirectory of /usr, such as the default as in Minix. (on modern systems, these user accounts are often related to server or system use, and not directly used by a person).

Question 14

/usr/bin

Answer 14

This directory stores all binary programs distributed with the operating system not residing in /bin, /sbin or (rarely) /etc.

Question 15

/usr/include

Answer 15

Stores the development headers used throughout the system. Header files are mostly used by the #include directive in C/C++ programming language.

Question 16

/usr/lib

Answer 16

Stores the required libraries and data files for programs stored within /usr or elsewhere

Question 17

/var

Answer 17

Stands for “variable”. A place for files that may change often - especially in size, for example e-mail sent to users on the system, or process-ID lock files.

Question 18

/var/log

Answer 18

Contains system log files.

Question 19

/var/mail

Answer 19

The place where all the incoming mails are stored. Users (other than root) can access their own mail only. Often, this directory is a symbolic link to /var/spool/mail.

Question 20

/var/spool

Answer 20

Spool directory. Contains print jobs, mail spools and other queued tasks.

Question 21

/var/tmp

Answer 21

A place for temporary files which should be preserved between system reboots.