Subdirectories of the root directory

Table 3-2. Subdirectories of the root directory

Directory	Content
/bin	Common programs, shared by the system, the system administrator and the users.
/boot	The startup files and the kernel, vmlinuz. In recent distributions also grub data. Grub is the GRand Unified Boot loader and is an attempt to get rid of the many different boot-loaders we know today.
/dev	Contains references to all the CPU peripheral hardware, which are represented as files with special properties.
/etc	Most important system configuration files are in /etc, this directory contains data similar to those in the Control Panel in Windows
/home	Home directories of the common users.
/initrd	(on some distributions) Information for booting. Do not remove!
/lib	Library files, includes files for all kinds of programs needed by the system and the users.
/lost+found	Every partition has a lost+found in its upper directory. Files that were saved during failures are here.
/misc	For miscellaneous purposes.
/mnt	Standard mount point for external file systems, e.g. a CD-ROM or a digital camera.
/net	Standard mount point for entire remote file systems
/opt	Typically contains extra and third party software.
/proc	A virtual file system containing information about system resources. More information about the meaning of the files in proc is obtained by entering the command man proc in a terminal window. The file proc.txt discusses the virtual file system in detail.
/root	The administrative user's home directory. Mind the difference between /, the root directory and /root, the home directory of the root user.
/sbin	Programs for use by the system and the system administrator.
/tmp	Temporary space for use by the system.
/usr	Programs, libraries, documentation etc. for all user-related programs.
/var	Storage for all variable files and temporary files created by users, such as log files, the mail queue, the print spooler area, space for temporary storage of files downloaded from the Internet, or to keep an image of a CD before burning it.

How can you find out which partition a directory is on? Using the df command with a dot (.) as an option shows the partition the current directory belongs to, and informs about the amount of space used on this partition:

sandra:/lib>df -h . Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/hda7             980M  163M  767M  18% /

As a general rule, every directory under the root directory is on the root partition, unless it has a separate entry in the full listing from df (or df -h with no other options).