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The Linux Filesystem
The linux File System is different to that of Windows, in that the File System is not represented by
Hard Drives and CD Drives like c:\ & d:\ etc. Instead, the whole system is
represented by the root
directory, or ‘/’. Files, folders, and drives, all exist within this.
Within ‘/’, exists a standard core directory structure:
The folder you operate in 95% of the time, is ‘~’, which usually equates to ‘/home/
’ (See
previous page for notes on the location of your home directory and how to find it), e.g: ‘/home/
msai135/’.
Even devices exist as files within a Unix system. They are located in ‘/dev/’, If you insert a CD, the
drive will be mounted to ‘/media/cdrom’. Some systems do this automatically, however sometimes
this needs to be done manually. An example command to run to do this would be: ‘mount /dev/sdb1
/media/cdrom’. This would allow you to access the CD-ROM by browsing ‘/media/cdrom/’. Before
ejecting the disk, you would exit from the mounted directory, then run ‘umount /media/cdrom’, and
then eject the disk from the computer. Some systems will respond to the command ‘eject’ for CD-
ROMs, automatically unmounting and ejecting the drive in one command.
USB Sticks, Memory Cards, and Hard Disks are all mounted in the same way, having a corresponding
‘/dev/’ file, and a location to mount it to. This could be in ‘/home//Storage’,
or in ‘/mnt’. It makes no difference to Linux, making it a very flexible and scalable OS.
