Linux Filesystem Management

LINUX FILE SYSTEM
MANAGEMENT
The filesystem hierarchy system
◦ To simplify the task of finding specific files, the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard (FHS) was created.
◦ FHS defines a standard set of directories for use by all Linux and UNIX systems as well as the file and
subdirectory contents of each directory.
◦ This ensures that, because the filename and location follow a standard convention, a Fedora Linux user
will find the correct configuration file on an openSUSE Linux or Hewlett-Packard UNIX computer with
little difficulty.
◦ The FHS also gives Linux software developers the ability to locate files on a Linux system regardless of
the distribution, allowing them to create software that is not distribution-specific.
Managing files and directories
◦ As mentioned earlier, using a Linux system involves navigating several directories and manipulating the
files inside them.
◦ Thus, an efficient Linux user must understand how to create directories as needed, copy or move files
from one directory to another, and delete files and directories.
◦ These tasks are commonly referred to as file management tasks. Following is an example of a directory
listing displayed by a user who is logged in as the root user:
◦ As shown in the preceding output, two executable files (myprogram and myscript), and several project-
related files (project*) exist on this example system.
◦ Because several project files are in the root user’s home directory in the preceding output, you could
create a subdirectory called proj_files to contain the project-related files and decrease the size of the
directory listing.
◦ To do this, you use the mkdir (make directory) command, which takes arguments specifying the
absolute or relative pathnames of the directories to create.
◦ To create a proj_files directory under the current directory, you can use the mkdir command with a
relative pathname:
◦ Now, you can move the project files into the proj_files subdirectory by using the mv (move) command.
The mv command requires two arguments at minimum: the source file/directory and the target
file/directory. For example, to move the /etc/sample1 file to the /root directory, you could use the
command mv /etc/sample1 /root.
◦ Note that both the source (or sources) and the destination can be absolute or relative pathnames and the
source can contain wildcards if several files are to be moved.
◦ For example, to move all of the project files to the proj_files directory, you could type mv with the
source argument project* (to match all files starting with the letters “project”) and the target argument
proj_files (relative pathname to the destination directory), as shown in the following output:
◦ In the preceding output, the current directory listing does not show the project files anymore, yet the
listing of the proj_files subdirectory indicates that they were moved successfully.
◦ Another important use of the mv command is to rename files, which is simply moving a file to the same
directory but with a different filename.
◦ To rename the myscript file from earlier examples to myscript2, you can use the following mv command:
◦ The first argument specifies the source file/directory to be copied and the second argument specifies the
target file/directory.
◦ If several files need to be copied to a destination directory, specify several source arguments, with the
final argument on the command line serving as the target directory.
◦ Each argument can be an absolute or relative pathname and can contain wildcards or the special
metacharacters “.” (which specifies the current directory) and “..” (which specifies the parent directory).
◦ You can also make copies of files in the same directory. To make a copy of the hosts file called hosts2 in
the current directory and view the results, type the following commands:
◦ Despite their similarities, the mv and cp commands work on directories differently.

◦ The mv command renames a directory, whereas the cp command creates a whole new copy of the
directory and its contents.
◦ To copy a directory full of files in Linux, you must tell the cp command that the copy will be recursive
(involve files and subdirectories too) by using the –r option.
◦ The following example demonstrates copying the proj_files directory and all of its contents to the
/home/user1 directory without and with the –r option:
◦ When you type mv, you are actually
running the mv command with the –i
option without realizing it.
◦ If the target file already exists, both the mv
command and the mv command with the –
i option interactively prompt the user to
choose whether to overwrite the existing
file.
◦ Similarly, when you type the cp command,
the cp –i command is actually run to
prevent the accidental overwriting of files.
◦ To see the aliases in your current shell,
type alias, as shown in the following
output:
◦ If you want to override this interactive option, which is known as interactive mode, use the –f (force)
option to override the choice, as shown in the following example.
◦ In this example, the root user tries to rename the hosts file using the name “hosts2,” a name already
assigned to an existing file.
◦ The example shows the user attempting this task both without and with the –f option to the mv
command:
◦ To remove files or directories, you must use either the rm command or the rmdir command.
◦ The rm (remove) command takes a list of arguments specifying the absolute or relative pathnames of
files to remove.
◦ As with most commands, wildcards can be used to simplify the process of removing multiple files.
◦ After a file has been removed from the filesystem, it cannot be recovered.
◦ As a result, the rm command is aliased in Fedora Linux to the rm command with the –i option, which
interactively prompts the user to choose whether to continue with the deletion.
◦ Like the cp and mv commands, the rm command accepts the –f option to override this choice and
immediately delete the file.
◦ An example demonstrating the use of the rm and rm –f commands to remove the current and hosts2 files
is shown here:
◦ To remove a directory, you can use the rmdir (remove directory) command; however, the rmdir
command only removes a directory if it contains no files.
◦ To remove a directory and the files inside, you must use the rm command and specify that a directory full
of files should be removed.
◦ As explained earlier in this chapter, you need to use the recursive option (–r) with the cp command to
copy directories; to remove a directory full of files, you can also use a recursive option (–r) with the rm
command.
◦ If, for example, the root user wants to remove the proj_files subdirectory and all of the files within it
without being prompted to confirm each file deletion, they could use the command rm –rf proj_files, as
shown in the following example:
◦ The aforementioned file management commands are commonly used by Linux users, developers, and
administrators alike. Table 4-2 shows a summary of these common file management commands.

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LINUX FILE SYSTEM

◦ Despite their similarities, the mv and cp commands work on directories differently.

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