Questions tagged [directory]
A file system structure in which to store computer files.
308
questions
528
votes
9
answers
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Execute vs Read bit. How do directory permissions in Linux work?
In my CMS, I noticed that directories need the executable bit (+x) set for the user to open them. Why is the execute permission required to read a directory, and how do directory permissions in Linux ...
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votes
6
answers
30k
views
How does Linux handle multiple consecutive path separators (/home////username///file)?
I'm working on a python script that passes file locations to an scp subprocess. That's all fine, but I'm in a situation where I may end up concatenating a path with a filename such that there's a ...
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97
votes
5
answers
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The result of ls * , ls ** and ls ***
I know using the command ls will list all the directories. But what does the ls * command do ? I used it and it just lists the directories. Does the star in front of ls mean how deep it will list the ...
- 1,083
374
votes
5
answers
696k
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How to set default file permissions for all folders/files in a directory?
I want to set a folder such that anything created within it (directories, files) inherit default permissions and group.
Lets call the group "media". And also, the folders/files created within the ...
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57
votes
3
answers
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Why does a new directory have a hard link count of 2 before anything is added to it?
Say I just create directory newDirectory and then I do ls -ld command. I see that the number of hard links is 2. What exactly makes the hard link 2 from the start? Also is the number of subdirectories ...
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87
votes
4
answers
36k
views
What does size of a directory mean in output of 'ls -l' command?
What does size of a directory mean in output of ls -l command?
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votes
4
answers
150k
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Do the parent directory's permissions matter when accessing a subdirectory?
If I have a root folder with some restrictive permission, let's say 600, and if the child folders/files have 777 permission will everybody be able to read/write/execute the child file even though the ...
- 2,535
141
votes
3
answers
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Getting new files to inherit group permissions on Linux
I am having a problem with permissions on a Linux server. I am used to BSD. When a directory is owned by a group the user who owns it isn't in such as www-data, files created in it will be owned by ...
- 1,990
34
votes
4
answers
38k
views
How to run a command when a directory's contents are updated?
There is a directory A whose contents are changed frequently by other people.
I have made a personal directory B where I keep all the files that have ever been in A.
Currently, I just occasionally ...
- 2,335
222
votes
11
answers
411k
views
Tool to monitor folder for new files and run command whenever new file is detected
How can I immediately detect when new files were added to a folder within a bash script?
I would like the script to process files as soon as they are created in the folder. Are there any methods aside ...
- 4,131
221
votes
8
answers
113k
views
How to remove all empty directories in a subtree?
How can I remove all empty directories in a subtree? I used something like
find . -type d -exec rmdir {} 2>/dev/null \;
but I needs to be run multiple times in order to remove directories ...
- 5,159
158
votes
7
answers
81k
views
Why are hard links to directories not allowed in UNIX/Linux?
I read in text books that Unix/Linux doesn't allow hard links to directories but does allow soft links. Is it because, when we have cycles and if we create hard links, and after some time we delete ...
- 4,408
88
votes
4
answers
67k
views
When should I use a trailing slash on a directory? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How linux handles multiple path separators (/home////username///file)
Most commands I use in linux behave exactly the same whether I include the trailing slash / character on ...
- 19.1k
31
votes
1
answer
3k
views
When did directories stop being readable as files?
I have the 1st edition of The Unix Programming Environment book. In chapter 2, the authors state that directories are readable as files, and mention some facts about the format of these files. They ...
- 683
28
votes
9
answers
8k
views
Any way to sync directory structure when the files are already on both sides?
I have two drives with the same files, but the directory structure is totally different.
Is there any way to 'move' all the files on the destination side so that they match the structure of the ...
- 847
257
votes
16
answers
326k
views
Merging folders with mv?
If I use mv to move a folder called "folder" to a directory that already contains "folder" will they merge or will it be replaced?
- 5,345
104
votes
6
answers
50k
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How can I create a /dev/null-like "blackhole" directory?
I would like to create a "/dev/null" directory (or a "blackhole" directory) such that any files written to it are not really written, but just disappear.
I have an application that writes out large ...
- 30.1k
77
votes
2
answers
92k
views
Command to zip multiple directories into individual zip files
I have a single directory that contains dozens of directories inside of it.
I'm new to command line and I'm struggling to come up with a command that will zip each sub-directory into a unique sub-...
- 1,715
16
votes
5
answers
7k
views
List all directories that do NOT have a file with a given file name inside
How would I go into listing all directories that do not have a file with a given file name inside? e.g. given this tree
/
/a
README
file001
file002
/b
README
file001
/c
...
- 17.2k
83
votes
2
answers
6k
views
Why does '/' have an '..' entry?
This has always puzzled me. Why does the root directory contain a reference to a parent directory?
bob@bob:/$ ls -a
. build home lib32 mnt .rpmdb sys vmlinuz
.. cdrom ...
- 6,250
25
votes
3
answers
62k
views
What are ./ and ../ directories?
Simple question, but I'm not sure where to look and google doesn't respond to periods and slashes.
I'm just trying to count the # of files & directories in the current directory (not including ...
- 293
14
votes
10
answers
28k
views
What's the best way to count the number of files in a directory?
If parsing the output of ls is dangerous because it can break on some funky characters (spaces, \n, ... ), what's the best way to know the number of files in a directory?
I usualy rely on find to ...
- 20.2k
170
votes
7
answers
81k
views
What does the .d stand for in directory names?
I know many directories with .d in their name:
init.d
yum.repos.d
conf.d
Does it mean directory? If yes, from what does this disambiguate?
UPDATE: I've had many interesting answers about what the ....
- 3,035
47
votes
9
answers
20k
views
mkdir -p for files
mkdir -p will create a directory; it will also make parent directories as needed.
Does a similar command exist for files, that will create a file and parent directories as needed?
- 1
36
votes
2
answers
23k
views
Where do the files go if you mount a drive to a folder that already contains files? [duplicate]
I just accidentally mounted a new drive to a folder that already contained files. I don't care about them and have them somewhere else, but that folder appears empty now. I'm curious what happened ...
- 1,471
15
votes
1
answer
2k
views
Why directory with large amounts of entries does not shrink in size after entries are removed?
The question is why exactly does a directory shrink after directory entries are removed? Is it due to how ext4 filesystem configured to retain directory metadata? Obviously removing the directory and ...
- 16.7k
113
votes
8
answers
795k
views
"Input/output error" when accessing a directory
I want to list and remove the content of a directory on a removable hard drive. But I have experienced "Input/output error":
$ rm pic -R
rm: cannot remove `pic/60.jpg': Input/output error
rm: cannot ...
- 104k
28
votes
8
answers
25k
views
How to set an alias on a per-directory basis?
Suppose you have an alias go, but want it to do different things in different directories?
In one directory it should run cmd1, but in another directory it should run cmd2
By the way, I have an ...
- 8,199
28
votes
1
answer
38k
views
In Linux, is "write" permission equivalent to "execute" for directories?
The execute permission makes sense for files (which include scripts etc.), but when it comes to directories, the write (w) permission works the same way as execute (x), right?
Which means, if we are ...
- 14.3k
18
votes
6
answers
22k
views
Linux local directory permissions as question-marks for non-root
I've seen cases like that with faulty storage devices, with faults in remote storage (SAN, NAS), I think I've even seen something similar caused by mount permissions. But it's the first time I see ...
- 425
13
votes
1
answer
52k
views
How can I make ls show information about the directory specified only, not info about its sub-files or folder contents?
Say I have folder "foo" residing, the home directory. I want to get some info of it, owner, group, permissions, etc...
I then do this to try to get the information:
cd ~
ls -l foo
Of course it now ...
- 6,031
529
votes
14
answers
903k
views
How do I loop through only directories in bash?
I have a folder with some directories and some files (some are hidden, beginning with dot).
for d in *; do
echo $d
done
will loop through all files and directories, but I want to loop only through ...
- 29.6k
257
votes
5
answers
297k
views
What is the 'working directory' when cron executes a job?
I have a script that works when I run it from the command line, but when I schedule it with cron I get errors that it cannot find files or commands. My question is twofold:
When I schedule a cron ...
- 3,235
97
votes
5
answers
197k
views
Determine what device a directory is located on
If I do
# cd /
# ln -s /home test
# cd test
# mount --bind $PWD /mnt
the entry in /proc/mounts is
/dev/sda2 /mnt ext4 rw,noatime,data=ordered 0 0
which is the device that is mounted to /home and ...
- 5,341
77
votes
8
answers
92k
views
Converting relative path to absolute path without symbolic link
Is there a Unix command to get the absolute (and canonicalized) path from a relative path which may contain symbolic links?
- 1,515
54
votes
2
answers
4k
views
Why is '.' a hard link in Unix?
I've seen many explanations for why the link count for an empty directory in Unix based OSes is 2 instead of 1. They all say that it's because of the '.' directory, which every directory has pointing ...
- 819
41
votes
2
answers
12k
views
Why was '.' chosen to represent the current directory and '..' for parent directory?
After reading this question Why was '~' chosen to represent the home directory?, next obvious question on my mind was why '.' and '..' was used to represent current directory and parent ...
- 510
36
votes
4
answers
67k
views
How can I move files by type recursively from a directory and its sub-directories to another directory?
What would be a good way to move a file type from a directory and all of its sub-directories?
Like "move all *.ogg in /thisdir recursively to /somedir". I tried a couple of things; my best effort was ...
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23
votes
10
answers
46k
views
How do I change folder timestamps recursively to the newest file?
I was wondering if anyone knows how to change the timestamps of folders recursively based on the latest timestamp found of the files in that folder.
So for example:
jon@UbuntuPanther:/media/media/...
- 363
11
votes
2
answers
4k
views
Trailing slashes on symbolic links to directories
I'm trying to emulate the process of path resolution (see man page path_resolution) in unix-like systems.
My OS is Linux with GNU coreutils 8.7.
In order to clarify the meaning of extra trailing '/' ...
- 383
8
votes
2
answers
3k
views
What happens when the current directory is deleted?
In the first terminal A, I create a directory, enter the directory, and create a file:
$ mkdir test
$ cd test
$ touch file1.txt
$ ls
file1.txt
Then in another terminal B, I delete the directory:
$ ...
- 185
116
votes
4
answers
490k
views
Create a symbolic link relative to the current directory
I'm trying to create a symbolic link in my home directory that points to a directory on my external HDD.
It works fine when I specify it like this:
cd ~
ln -s /run/media/name/exhdd/Data/ Data
...
- 3,884
51
votes
5
answers
98k
views
Is there any way to prevent deletion of certain files from user owned directory?
Let's say user has Directory1 and it contains File1 File2 CantBeDeletedFile
How to make so the user would never be allowed to delete the CantBeDeletedFile?
If I change the ownership of Directory1 and ...
- 2,961
26
votes
9
answers
6k
views
Clipboard for copying and pasting files in command line?
In Bash, suppose I visit a directory, and then another directory. I would like to copy a file from the first directory to the second directory, but without specifying the long pathnames of them. Is it ...
- 104k
23
votes
4
answers
18k
views
How are directories implemented in Unix filesystems?
My question is how directories are implemented? I can believe a data structure like a variable e.g. table, array or similar. Since UNIX is Open Source I can look in the source what the program does ...
- 4,282
16
votes
1
answer
6k
views
How to find all the links to a directory
When I stat a directory I get a listing that tell me there are 5 links to the directory.
stat dir
My question is how do I get information (names and locations) to all these 5 links?
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346
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5
answers
1.3m
views
How can I get the current working directory? [duplicate]
I want to have a script that takes the current working directory to a variable. The section that needs the directory is like this dir = pwd. It just prints pwd how do I get the current working ...
user104976
270
votes
21
answers
390k
views
How do I get the MD5 sum of a directory's contents as one sum?
The md5sum program does not provide checksums for directories. I want to get a single MD5 checksum for the entire contents of a directory, including files in sub-directories. That is, one combined ...
user17429
141
votes
5
answers
147k
views
Difference between /bin and /usr/bin
I read this up on this website and it doesn't make sense.
http://rcsg-gsir.imsb-dsgi.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/documents/basic/node32.html
When UNIX was first written, /bin and
/usr/bin physically resided ...
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121
votes
7
answers
85k
views
Flattening a nested directory
This is probably very simple, but I can't figure it out. I have a directory structure like this (dir2 is inside dir1):
/dir1
/dir2
|
--- file1
|
--- file2
What is ...
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