System information

Sharing and maintaining SLES 10 SP2 Linux under z/VM 9
/lib Essential shared libraries and kernel modules
/media Mount point for removable media
/mnt Mount point for mounting a file system temporarily
/opt Add-on application software packages
/sbin Essential system binaries
/srv Data for services provided by this system
/tmp Temporary files
/usr Secondary hierarchy
/var Variable data
The following directories, or symbolic links to directories, must be in /, if the corresponding
subsystem is installed:
/home User home directories (optional)
/lib<qual> Alternate format essential shared libraries (optional)
/root Home directory for the root user (optional)
Each of these directories is addressed in the section that follows.
/sbin
The /sbin directory is primarily used privileged commands such as shutdown, ifconfig,
reboot and others. The commands in this directory are mostly intended for system
administrators and usually require root access. The /sbin/ directory is in root’s PATH, but not
in the PATH of non-root users.
/bin
The FHS states:
“Unlike /sbin, the /bin directory contains several useful commands that are of use to both
the system administrator as well as non-privileged users. It usually contains the shells like
bash, csh, etc.... and commonly used commands like cp, mv, rm, cat, ls. For this reason
and in contrast to /usr/bin, the binaries in this directory are considered to be essential.
The reason for this is that it contains essential system programs that must be available
even if only the partition containing the root directory is mounted. This situation may arise
should you need to repair other partitions but have no access to shared directories (i.e.
you are in single user mode and hence have no network access). It also contains
programs which boot scripts may require to be present. “
/boot
The FHS states:
“This directory contains everything required for the boot process except for configuration
files not needed at boot time (the most notable of those being those that belong to the
GRUB boot-loader, not used in System z Linux) and the map installer. Thus, the /boot
directory stores data that is used before the kernel begins executing user-mode programs.
This may include redundant (back-up) master boot records, sector/system map files, the
kernel and other important boot files and data that is not directly edited by hand. Programs
necessary to arrange for the boot loader to be able to boot a file are placed in /sbin.
Configuration files for boot loaders are placed in /etc. The system kernel is located in
either / or /boot (or as under Debian in /boot but is actually a symbolically linked at / in
accordance with the FHS). The boot loader for IBM System z also resides in this
directory.“
In this paper, /boot/ is read-only, however, there may be times when a read-write copy is
necessary.