Ask HN: Recommended guides for learning filesystems?

#1

Post by mgpela » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 4:52 PM UTC

Hi, *nix newbie here. I'm struggling with understanding how my Ubuntu's filesystem works and what general practices various applications follow when they install to my Ubuntu instance. I'm currently reading the ldconfig man page and feeling pretty lost. Any good guides or resources for understanding how filesystems and links work?

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: Recommended guides for learning filesystems?

#2

Post by d0mine » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

> what general practices various applications follow when they install to my Ubuntu instance

Run:

  $ man hier

It describes the file system hierarchy.

Re: Ask HN: Recommended guides for learning filesystems?

#3

Post by xiphias » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 5:20 PM UTC

Any book about operating systems should be a good start..you'll learn about drivers, virtual memory, file systems, task switching and a lot of other things and how they work together.

Re: Ask HN: Recommended guides for learning filesystems?

#4

Post by tbirrell » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 5:21 PM UTC

I can't think of any guides. I picked up most of my know-how through using Linux (Ubuntu, specifically).

A couple things for you which may be obvious, but a good place to start nonetheless:

/ - This is Root. Most of your system files are in this directory.

/home/username/ - This is your home directory, a common abbreviation is "~/" (tilde). If you are a windows user, this is the equivalent of the file system you are used to using. In this directory are also many dot files (.ssh/, .local/, etc). these are (usually hidden) system files that are specific to your user. Generally, there are defaults in / (root) and these files customize them for your user only.

Knowing these two things and a handful of basic commands will allow you to get started. Look into the commands 'cd', 'pwd', 'ls', 'sudo', 'touch', 'mkdir'.

Re: Ask HN: Recommended guides for learning filesystems?

#5

Post by detaro » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 5:21 PM UTC

Do you mean the technical details behind how a file system work internally, or how the files and the filesystem layout in a Linux/Ubuntu system are structured?

Re: Ask HN: Recommended guides for learning filesystems?

#6

Post by marios » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 5:26 PM UTC

"man hier" and "man ln" are a decent start (the second one is because you mentionned links).

Re: Ask HN: Recommended guides for learning filesystems?

#7

Post by stefantalpalaru » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 5:26 PM UTC

Start here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard

Re: Ask HN: Recommended guides for learning filesystems?

#8

Post by crossbowerbt » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 5:31 PM UTC

A good book, but not widely known (maybe a little low level, but still...)

Ah, it's also free ;)

From the the haiku project website: https://www.haiku-os.org/legacy-docs/practical-file-system-d...

Re: Ask HN: Recommended guides for learning filesystems?

#9

Post by crossbowerbt » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

Also see the Linux Standard Base project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_Standard_Base

Re: Ask HN: Recommended guides for learning filesystems?

#10

Post by nomadlogic » Fri, Jan 20, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

"The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System" not only does a great job at covering how the UFS filesystem is implemented, but also does a great job at explaining how and Unix systems are implemented. I highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in Unix internals.

https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operati...