Using a Linux distro is a completely different thing. If you are a windows user you can see they have a drive based structure for file system. If I take an example there is a system directory called
C:/windows/system32 . If you have another partition they will be D:\ , E:\ etc. All of files and folders are inside of those drives. So every file path is starting with a drive letter. But in Linux we treat all thing as directories. The directory tree is begin with '/' . We call it root of the tree.
[email protected]:~$ ls /
0 dev initrd.img lib64 mnt root snap tmp vmlinuz
bin etc initrd.img.old lost+found opt run srv usr vmlinuz.old
boot home lib
/root & /home
Actually in Linux there are three things called root. Above root of the directory tree is a one. Next we have a super user called 'root'. Also there is a special directory as /root that's owned by root user. this one is equal to home folder of root. Normal users have there own home folders in /home. If your user name is 'us3r' your home folder will be
/home/us3r. I think you ma have see that in many times there is a flag called root.txt in CTF s inside /root. So if you want to get that flag you need to root the mashing.
/var
Hear you can find files those have a variable size. It's a common thing that htdocs folder of server is located in this directory. In early versions that was
/var/www and now that's
/var/www/html. Also log files are located inside this directory. (/var/logs)
[email protected]:~$ ls /var
backups lib lock mail run spool unicornscan
cache local log opt snap tmp www
/tmp
This is the place for temporary files .Usually this folder has the write permission for all. You may find that when uploading a shell to server we first change current directory to /tmp.
/sys
/usr
This directory comes with commands and data files .There are many sub application files in /usr/share folder.
[email protected]:~$ ls /usr
bin games include lib lib64 local sbin share src var
[email protected]:~$ ls /usr/share
accountsservice gvfs pev
aclocal hal php7.2-common
aclocal-1.16 hamster-sidejack php7.2-json
adduser hashcat php7.2-mysql
afl hashcat-utils php7.2-opcache
aglfn help php7.2-pgsql
airgeddon hexorbase php7.2-readline
alsa hfsprogs php7.2-sqlite3
android-framework-res highlight pipal
ant homebank pixmaps
/etc
This folder is responsible for holding all configuration files. If you want to tweak your Is or programs you may need to go there.For a example to change sources in apt you want to edit /etc/sourses.d
[email protected]:~$ ls /etc
adduser.conf gimp menu-methods rmt
adjtime glvnd mercurial rpc
aliases gnome-system-tools mime.types rsyslog.conf
alsa gnuradio miredo rsyslog.d
alternatives groff miredo.conf samba
amap group mke2fs.conf sane.d
anonsurf group- modprobe.d scalpel
apache2 grub.d modules screenrc
apm gshadow modules-load.d securetty
apparmor gshadow- mono security
apparmor.d gss motd selinux
apt gtk-2.0 mpv sensors3.conf
arpwatch gtk-3.0 mtab sensors.d
/bin
This directory contains all executable binary files required for booting the system. Commands those run in single user-mode such as ls, ping, chmod are also located hear.
[email protected]:~$ ls /bin
bash findmnt netstat su
btrfs fsck.btrfs networkctl sync
btrfsck fuser nisdomainname systemctl
btrfs-find-root fusermount ntfs-3g systemd
btrfs-image getfacl ntfs-3g.probe systemd-ask-password
btrfs-map-logical grep ntfscat systemd-escape
btrfs-select-super gunzip ntfscluster systemd-hwdb
/lib
Hear you can find system libraries and kernel modules.
/opt
This folder can be used to hold custom program files. If you wanted to install sublime manually you may copy files to /opt/sublime.
[email protected]:~$ ls /opt
car-hacking firmware-mod-kit sublime_text Teeth xplico
/dev
This directory Contains device related files for all hardware devices .
If you are going to mount a new drive you may need this directory.
[email protected]:~$ ls /dev
agpgart kmsg serial tty20 tty47 uhid
autofs log sg0 tty21 tty48 uinput
block loop-control sg1 tty22 tty49 urandom
bsg lp0 sg2 tty23 tty5 vcs
btrfs-control mapper sg3 tty24 tty50 vcs1
bus mem sg4 tty25 tty51 vcs2
cdc-wdm0 memory_bandwidth shm tty26 tty52 vcs3
cdrom mqueue snapshot tty27 tty53 vcs4
cdrw net snd tty28 tty54 vcs5
So I hope you got an idea about Linux directory tree. Thank you for reading. Just leave a comment if somthin is unclear or wrong. :-)
