Linux FileSystem Hierarchy (FHS) Directory Structure Standards

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The next thing we need to know about is the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy.

The Linux Filesystem Hierarchy, also known as FHS is something that standardizes how directories on Linux are used. So standard directories are defined in the FHS, and the FHS is something that is maintained by the Linux Foundation.
Linux Foundation is the organization behind Linux. All of the Linux Distributions are a member of the Linux Foundation, and Linux Foundation works as a standardization body for the different Linux distributions. With the result that the directories structure that we will find on redhat looks a lot like the directory structure that we will find on Ubuntu for example. Now, in the FHS the starting point is the root directory. So everything that exists in the Linux system exists under the root directory. And in the root directory, different devices may be integrated by using mounts.

So in the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy, we have this root directory. And in the root directory, we may have a couple of sub-directories like the boot directory, the home directory, the var directory, and all these other directories. Now we just see a Filesystem Hierarchy without any specific devices. But the devices can be used in the Linux environment by using mounts. The mount is a fundamental contact Linux, and it will be used by default.

The root directory, for example, is mounted on this device like dev/sda tool or whatever the name of were disk device is.

Very often the boot directory is split-off and is on its own disk the device like /dev/sda1.

The home directory might even be on a remote server like an nfs server. So it will be mounted on server:/home and the var directory, well we get the idea, maybe on a different device as well, maybe a dedicated hard disk like /dev/sdb.

And by using all these mounts, we make sure that the Linux Filesystem is very flexible because it is easy to add a device to the Filesystem. And if we see that some specific directory is becoming too big, we just connect it to a new device and we give it it’s own dedicated disk space.

And all of that is invisible if we just use the ls commands while looking at the contents of the root directory. We will learn about mounts in much more detail later in this course. But or now, it’s good already if we understand that all of these files are spread out of multiple devices.

source by Decode ITES

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